In my last post I shared the latest stats on marriage for white women in the US. The key takeaway is that it seems very likely that a large number of women intending to only delay marriage will end up losing out on the opportunity to marry. The very fact which makes young women delaying marriage feel safe (so many of their peers are doing the same thing) is ironically the source of the risk.

But what if you are a woman who wants to marry? How can you make use of this information? The first thing you need to do is memorize all of the following bits of folk wisdom:

You have all of the time in the world.

God has the perfect man already picked for you, and He will reveal this man in His time.

“Having a fabulous single life leads to an even better marriage later” (see link above for source)

Now is the time to travel, date lots of men, and find yourself!

Never settle!

Get a set of notecards and write all of these sayings down on them and keep the cards with you at all times. This is critical, because when one of your peers starts talking about getting off the carousel and taking her husband hunt seriously, you will need these sayings to talk her out of it. Right now you have information which the market hasn’t fully processed; you need to keep it that way while you snatch up the best available man.

Don’t settle; get the best husband you can.

The last piece of folk wisdom in the bullet list above is actually correct, but you can use it to confuse your competition. It doesn’t have to work forever, it just has to stun her for a bit while you take care of business. Instead of settling, what you want to do is figure out what your priorities are, and then compare those against your legitimate marriage prospects.

As a thought exercise, imagine the best husband you can reasonably expect to attract. Think of the actual marriage proposals you have received in the last few years. If you have none for reference, you will need to be painfully honest about which of the men who expressed interest in you were likely to want to marry you. The more honest you are here the better a head start you will have over your peers. Now imagine this best case husband. If you look closely, you will notice other women around him. That’s right:

Those bitches are trying to steal your man!

Given the urgency involved, it is critical that you stop dating for fun or for a boyfriend, and start instead looking seriously for a husband.

Now that you understand what is going on you need to also consider the risks. Like the salmon in the picture your path to find a mate is known by others. This is especially true if you’ve waited until the last minute. Not all men in the dating market are interested in marriage. You need to make sure you don’t waste your time with these men while the bitches are busy stealing your man. This is why being honest about the kind of man you can attract for marriage is so crucial. Men like Marcos are looking for greedy marks who themselves are looking to con an unsuspecting man into marriage with the early offer of sex. Don’t focus on the too good to be true men, because they probably are.

The last piece of advice I’ll offer is to expand your net. If you have been assuming that you will be meeting better marriage prospects in the future, scrutinize that assumption. If there is reason to still believe this, what can you do to make this happen today? You don’t want to rush into a marriage you or your husband won’t be willing to stick with, but you do want to find a way to expedite the arrival of the mystery man you have so far been patiently waiting for. This might mean moving to another city or even state, but it could just be getting more involved in activities where you think your future husband is likely to meet you.

Quote: “Great idea! Where’s the challenge in signing your life away to some dreary bloke with nothing to offer but stability, good behaviour and co-parenting when you can have a boy with “strong feelings” who doesn’t want to be “serious”? And actually, I’m not joking.”

If you aren’t able to handle the sophistications of a fully-functioning heterosexual union based on your own sense of masculine power and ability to select a decent wife, then yeah, you probably aren’t ready for a permanent adult relationship, i.e. marriage. And if you feel “degraded” by the institution that you have knowingly participated in, then yeah, you probably aren’t cut out for the big boy stuff because you haven’t accepted your responsibilities as an adult, which implies a certain amount of compromise.

But this isn’t for amateurs. The “natural and spontaneous” marriage you mock is the result of an innately difficult process in which your ability to make a proper wife selection is critical, and your ability to handle your business as a man is crucial. If you fucked up with the former, then it’s going to take a profound effort on the latter end to mitigate that. And that ain’t easy. Even if you didn’t fuck up on your wife selection, there are going to be issues of management that will challenge your abilities and skills as a man as a matter of course.

Being a husband is going to be a challenge on the best of days. Being a GOOD husband, especially a good Red Pill husband, is a tremendous challenge, not for the faint of heart. If you can’t hang or can’t be bothered to do the footwork, then don’t expect to get the reward of a natural and spontaneous marriage. Stick with your XBox and porn.

But when you’re 60, and you need someone to drive you to your oncologist four times a week and make sure you take your pills on time so you don’t lapse into a coma . . . well, hard to find a casual girlfriend willing to take care of your sorry ass at that point. And that’s the time you should reflect about how much easier you’ve had it that you haven’t had to be degraded or over-taxed with the complications of matrimony as they haul you out of your one-bedroom on a gurney after your mailman finds you sprawled out on the front porch unconscious because you took a fall and nobody in the world gave a damn. I’m sure it will be a very reassuring thought.

The word that jumped out at me from the above is, ‘Risk’; yet we are told that women are the more Risk averse. If that is true, how, if marriage is their goal, can they be so careless? Is it, as those less than impressed with female intelligence maintain, that they are a lot of sheep; and indeed I have often observed that when one woman marries they all marry… and then when the first divorces, they all again follow suit. I suppose they were unhaaapy.

So here to cheer you all up is something happy. This is a tweet posted at 1.28 pm a couple of Fridays ago: ‘In back of car with my Dad on the way to the Church… so excited, can’t wait!!’
… and what did her then fiancee tweet that same day? Just the following at 01.01pm and in reponse to a male friend: ‘I want one of those L…M….. [Computer Geek machine] Agreed’.

Brides are always beautiful; Grooms nervous – Certainly scared the life out of me reading those two tweets.

May the happy couple now on honeymoon on the Camino de Santiago in Spain have a long and happy marriage!

@Pirran – it occurred to me, as I was catching up on my Dalrock reading this morning, that one could almost give rebuttal to the ENTIRE article penned by Mariella (or whatever her name is) with just one of the charts from Dal’s penultimate post.

“If, as your behaviour suggests, you have doubts about your ability to commit, then rein in this rush into adulthood, let your hair down, live a little and learn to rely on yourself, not the man at your shoulder.”

The moral thing to do is not to hurt somebody else through immaturity, but I cannot see how embracing immaturity can lead to maturity. The trick is to learn from others mistakes, not to make them yourself.

>>What to do?
Honestly, all one has to do is read athol’s blog on a daily basis to comprehend the complicated degradations one must put themselves through to create a “natural and spontaneous” marriage.

If that doesn’t warn you off, nothing will.

This exactly! I also like the comment about if one women divorces, they all do – I’ve seen this with my friends. It’s like a line, and when one goes, they all seem to go.

“From glitzy premieres to hanging out with the Hollywood A-list, Mariella Frostrup spent two decades having so much fun she almost missed out on what she wanted most – to be a mum.

Now 44, the presenter and journalist flitted from relationship to relationship in her 20s and 30s, until nearing 40 she realised she was nowhere close to finding a man she could settle down with and start a family.

“It wasn’t that I was worried about not being able to have kids, I worried more I wouldn’t meet someone I could have a baby with,” she says.

It wasn’t until she was 39 and on a charity trek in Nepal that she met Jason McCue, a human rights lawyer, seven years her junior. It was far from love at first sight.

She has said he was “too blond and too full of himself”. But still they clicked and six months later moved in together.

Their relationship sounds feisty but somehow it works. “We irritated each other from the moment we met and still do,” she says, sipping water at a bar in London’s Notting Hill. “We’ve just been on holiday with some friends and their teenage daughter said to her mum, ‘I thought Mariella and Jason didn’t like each other that much.'”

@Höllenhund :
Some of the women who consider themselves “Children of God” …
have attitudes that would not be out-of-place in 1940s Germany.
I suspect they will go to China and India when they are over 30, if at all.
The amount of disrespect the men there get, is directly co-related to the age of the woman going there to get married.
Of course, calling out these women about their attitude, you will be told they grew up in Hawaii and are colour-blind(yet consider China and India to be a desert in terms of relationships … since they are only after expats — who choose local women).
When a woman is past her youth(which she wasted by not being in a committed relationship) when she decides to get married … is huge disrespect to the guy she’s with.

Sadly the Grauniad comments section (or “Komment Macht Frei” as James Delingpole (and others) refer to it) is notoriously reluctant to post ANYTHING remotely critical of the fem-bot status quo. They are ferociously PC and pro free speech as long as it agrees entirely with what they think and say.

“Now 44, the presenter and journalist flitted from relationship to relationship in her 20s and 30s, until nearing 40 she realised she was nowhere close to finding a man she could settle down with and start a family.”

Frostrup was one of those wimmin who floated to the top on looks and connections. I’ve never heard an insightful remark spill from her mouth, but she’s never been out of work within the BBC luvvie PC establishment. As long as you keep saying the right things, never credit men and radiate smugness, you’re fine as a wimmin at the Beeb. Their managers are exactly the same (and now largely comprise wimminz as well).

It’s due to lame-ass columns like this that I largely quit reading mainstream newspapers. Whenever the run a columns about men in general, or women in general, or just male-female relations in general, one can be sure it’s 100% BS.

Dalrock wrote:
▪ “You have all of the time in the world.
▪ God has the perfect man already picked for you, and He will reveal this man in His time.
▪ The last one down the aisle wins.
▪ “Having a fabulous single life leads to an even better marriage later” (see link above for source)
▪ Now is the time to travel, date lots of men, and find yourself!
Never settle!”

Since I snagged my own husband 21 years ago when I was at the tender age of 22, I can’t directly use Dalrock’s advice. However, as the mother of five daughters, all the talk of a possible marriage strike had me worried. As much as we love our daughters, we do hope to offload them at some point. Thus, I see now that I must take a more proactive approach to finding their future husbands by eliminating as much of the competition for the few remaining single marriage-minded young men as possible. To that end, I will add to the original post my own advice:

Never Marrieds Piling Up Part 2: What should a mother of daughters do?

1. Ladies, when you are around other mothers, talk up the importance of sending the little darlings off to a prestigious and very expensive university. Lay this groundwork early on so that other mothers will never really consider preparing their daughters for marriage prior to age 30. And after all, didn’t the Youth Pastor bring in that Silver Ring group? So there’s no need to worry about what little Monica will be doing in her co-ed dorm after she tries her first shot of tequila, right? Meanwhile, your own daughters will be staying at home to learn how to cook and manage a budget, and maybe take a few classes at a local community college.
2. Compliment a friend’s ten-year-old daughter’s t-shirt which says, “I kiss on the first date!” in sparkly letters. (I actually saw this). Men do not wish to marry sluts, so the sluttier the other mamas’ daughters look and act, the better your girls will seem. Meanwhile, teach your own daughters to dress in a pretty, feminine but reasonably modest way. Oh, and check out your own wardrobe, too, Mama. Does your shirt reveal 2/3 of your bra? Do you dress like a lesbian? Fix that now.
3. Encourage the Prince Charming myth when you are around other women’s daughters. Buy them lots of Taylor Swift CDs so that they will realize that there is a very special man out there somewhere who will fulfill their every last wish, want, need, and desire. Her own parents may be silent and bleary-eyed over coffee at the breakfast table, but her life will not be like that if she finds the Perfect Man. If her life IS like that, it will be because he has failed in some way to make her life a constant source of romantic excitement. Meanwhile, teach your own daughters to value what God’s word has to say are desirable characteristics in a man – faith, strength, integrity, honesty, self-control, and so on.
4. Affirm the discontented women in your Tuesday morning Bible study whose husbands are not fulfilling them in some way. Listen with an interested look on your face while they criticize their husbands endlessly. You might mention that you read somewhere a checklist about emotional or spiritual abuse. Meanwhile, model at home that you understand that the purpose of marriage is to make you holy, not (necessarily always) happy. Be respectful toward your own husband at all times.
5. Buy books like “Gigi, God’s Little Princess” (for the little ones) and “Daughters of the King” (for the teenagers) as gifts for your friends’ daughters. That way they will know what a pretty, pretty princess and Special Snowflake Jesus thinks they are and will not settle for a man who doesn’t treat them accordingly. Meanwhile, cultivate a humble attitude and servant’s heart in your own daughters. Encourage them to defer their own wants and meet others needs at least half the time if not more.
6. If all else fails, try trolling MRA blogs for other women who are the mothers of sons. Maybe one of them has a son who is taking an interest in an EAP and she wants to put a stop to it. Mention that you might have a better alternative.

On the “never settle” part… Far too many EAPs do NOT settle…. for anything less than an alpha bad boy with a high paying career. They will VERY HAPPILY settle for a lack of spiritual character and moral fiber SO LONG AS the proper alpha traits are there. Never mind that the alpha is playing them with no intention of marriage, they just know that since they are perfect little princesses they’ll be able to convert him after they sleep with him enough times.

Sunshine,
If Lance Criminal ever decides he wants to get married, I will send him your way. He could do much worse than to have five decent girls to pick from. (And while he’s not Prince Charming, He IS a prince in my eyes!) Rather handsome too.

If all else fails, try trolling MRA blogs for other women who are the mothers of sons. Maybe one of them has a son who is taking an interest in an EAP and she wants to put a stop to it. Mention that you might have a better alternative.

Hmmmm….. That might actually work. When my sons are old enough to date, I’ll start asking around the manosphere, looking for anyone with properly raised daughters…

Back when there was a middle class and the fault divorce laws where in effect this would have been great advice.
Then again, if you’re making 6 figures and want to roll the dice have at it.
The young guys just starting out are going to have a hard time relating to this.
Fell off the porch?Maybe she pushed him!
On a related note-half the returning vets are filing for disability, wheres the long term security
in that situation?
Job security is also on outdated concept.
Briffault’s law.Ladder theory.Hypergamy,all point to no marriage.
It’s great to be an old armchair advisor?
Wow this new Vista machine makes my writing look primitive.

You know this one thing really bugs me about many in the manosphere, the desire and need to give females advice. What team are you playing for anyway?! I mean its not like western society hasn’t coddled women enough already. Also let us not be so presumptuous as to assume that women are stupid and don’t know about the marriage market. I think they have concluded that their male peers are “thirsty” enough that most of them would jump at the chance of marrying them. I think they are right. This reminds me of something I think Roosh once said that unless it is something about weight loss or fitness women really don’t care for men’s advice.

[D: Are you angry that I’m giving women good advice, or that they won’t take it?]

Nas: let us not be so presumptuous as to assume that women are stupid and don’t know about the marriage market.

Applying Occam’s razor, we must indeed take as a working operating theory, that women truly don’t understand the marriage market. This is the simplest explanation that fits the observeable facts.

Whether the reason for this is stupidity (i don’t think so), or cultural misconditioning, or ignorance, or wilful “ignorance” is beside the point. Whatever the etiology, an awful lot of women wake up at age 30+ and say, “Whoa, where’s my husband? He should have appeared by now” In a tragic number of cases, they never find one, or find one too late to have kids. PROOF: We would not see legions of complaints, and mournful columns, about this topic, if these women truly didn’t want to marry. Clearly they want marriage, but don’t prioritize it until almost (or actually) too late. It seems that many of them waste their 20s building their careers and playing with badboys, assuming that the nice guys will wait for them forever and their fertility will never fade.

You must understand that this manosphere effort is ultimately driven by love. We WANT TO BE WITH WOMEN. And we are frustrated that we (a) aren’t marrying, or (b) are being forced to wait way too long, or (for those like me who finally scored), (c) our sons may face one of those fates.

Operatingomega wrote: “Sunshine: “a checklist about emotional or spiritual abuse” I raged a little just reading that line, knowing that my mom probably read something like this prior to divorcing my father after 30 years of marriage.”

Ladies, here is a new checklist. I just came up with it. Please disseminate it at your small group/Bible study/coffee klatch groups.

“Are you being abused by your man? A checklist for the Christian woman.” By Sunshine

1. Did his fist make contact with your face? Score 1 point for “Yes” and 0 points for “No”.

Scoring Key:
1 point – You have been abused.
0 points – You have not been abused.

@Sunshine
Your 6 point plan … has just 1 huge flaw:
The assumption that your girl is going to be unaffected by her peers, their relational aggression and their judgements.
It is amazing how women/girls mess up good relationships to please other women, or bring racism or other despicable characteristics into the mix.
Being Godly won’t change the end-result of unGodly statements or behaviour towards others, and especially the men that women “claim to want, if she was 10 years younger”.

My somewhat angry rant was fueled by the frustration of seeing all these MRA bloggers still trying to cater to women; still coddling women as if this society doesn’t do enough of this already. They also keep defending the corrupt institution of marriage. How about these bloggers spend more time advising young men instead of young women? It is called the manosphere after all.

I also never understood how they keep adopting such patronizing attitudes towards women, telling them that they know what’s really good for them and so women should listen. But obviously women have no intention of listening. They also aren’t as ignorant as many in the manosphere so arrogantly assume that they are. They know what’s up, they have looked around and decided that they wanna have their fun as long as possible and will only get married when they are damn well and ready (as Dalrock himself have written).

I am in my mid 20s and the only women around my age I have seen tying the knot are not the most attractive ones. It is as if they knew that things will not get any better for them and they should cash in their chips now. This is how they tell their more attractive peers “hey look I am not a loser”. Most women though look around and assume (I believe rightly) that guys here in America are extremely thirsty and would gladly marry some old slut with a bad attitude all the while buying into some romantic delusions. Why else would any man get married with marital laws so biased against them?!They wait; cuz they can. I am glad that at least the article pointed out that the marriage strike is in fact driven by women and not men.

Dalrock makes the argument that these women would eventually want to get married as it confers some sort of status onto them. But to my mind there are a few holes to this theory:

1) I don’t understand how marrying a beta loser would give them any status. Or how it would not bring forth shaming accusation of settling?

2) You write: “We would not see legions of complaints, and mournful columns, about this topic, if these women truly didn’t want to marry.” These complaints are from a previous generation where most women married. Women have a more equitable social structure than men do and these women have lost out and are voicing their frustrations. If in the next generation, spinsterhood becomes the norm then I don’t see most women complaining. Because that would be the new NORMAL. Sure, women with alpha husbands might be considered the winners but that wouldn’t motivate other women to go out and get beta husbands.

Let’s face it marriage has run its usefulness. With women’s independence and own means of income there is simply no need for it any more. As always men are ever so slow to acclimate to social changes. But I say good riddance to a corrupt and exploitative institution.

I don’t understand how marrying a beta loser would give them any status.

That’s not what they’re after. They are after stability, not status.

These complaints are from a previous generation where most women married…. If in the next generation, spinsterhood becomes the norm then I don’t see most women complaining

First, the genetic architecture of the species isn’t going to change any time soon. Most women EVENTUALLY want to settle down with a good man, in marriage or something like it.

Secondly…. If spinsterhood becomes the new norm, there will BE NO next generation. Either high fertility subcultures, or immigrants, willl take over and the “spinsterhood as normal” culture will be a humorous footnote in history.

Let’s face it marriage has run its usefulness. With women’s independence and own means of income there is simply no need for it any more.

For Christians who want to have sex, marriage is mandatory. As long as conservative religions survive, there will be a subset of the population that will marry. Indeed, evangelical women are encouraged in their dreams of marriage… problem is, the princess fantasy causes them to hold out too long. Some of the most attractive evangelical women I ever knew, never married becuase they kept holding out for someone “better”… while the more normal looking ones settled down and had families.

van Rooinek is right about marriage, Nas, and many of us are grateful to Dalrock for telling it like it is, to both men and women. I don’t know what you’re reading, but the vast majority of Manosphere sites DO advise young men, almost exclusively. This one focuses on marriage, so women are naturally a part of it. And believe it or not, there ARE women who want lifelong marriages, and are even willing to make the effort. You can bet your last dollar that most women’s sites are NOT teaching us how to make a marriage work! Sites like this are extremely rare resources for us. And every time a marriage-minded woman gets real, a man benefits. So do their children. Families are not going away; we need more good ones.

Those women that marry early may have a more realistic perspective of their sexual market value. The problem only arises when the woman listens to the whispers of the feminist culture and becomes unhappy, eventually pulling the divorce trigger.

The low status woman might also be drawn to the drama of a wedding, the desire for a baby,or any other number of reasons.

The snagged betas in their twenties may be rapt about getting any female attention. Being overlooked, disdained and disrespected for ten years does odd things to the male psyche.

Women will still want to have babies. If Harley McBadboy eludes them, they will become single moms or serial monogamists, when they get sick of their current squeeze. Meanwhile, daddy is on the hook financially and gets nothing in return except custody every second weekend, whilst mommy goes on the cougar trail.

Taxes will rise to support the heroic single moms.

Involuntary spinsters will become the next generation of victims of mens alleged shortcomings and failures.

As van rooinek said, to have sex christians to marry. But whilst the false gods in suits define and control marriage, it will continue to lose appeal. What is the point?

As Rod Stewart said, you may as well find a woman you dislike and simply buy her a house. A quicker and simpler means to an end. Oddly, as tfh points out, the tax system already does this with wealth transfers to women.

That’s both devious and brilliant. Oddly enough, it fits perfectly into the female intra-sex competition dynamic. But what’s even scarier is you’d just be reinforcing what is already the standard dynamic for most of society. That should probably scare us all the most.

Of course, an attractive woman can pull this off at 39, but most don’t look as good at her age. The husband is not bad looking but no hunk (mine’s more handsome). Although she did have the kids a bit too late, if she’d done it at, let’s say, 35 and 37, it would’ve been much better than at 41, which she acknowledges herself, btw:http://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/stop-scaring-older-mums-7167338.html

TFH
Women are biologically wired to comply to their social group. This is what enabled them to survive in prehistoric times.

But today, the opinion of the group is the opinion of television and the media. Hence, women comply to that even to their own detriment.

This is where women that desire to be MRA’s have the most influence. Rather than parrot mens comments with qualifiers (men are bad too) Women can influence the herd. If the herd says older reliable bald men that never miss work are sexy and a good catch. You will see women tripping over themselves looking for old bald man to suck his dick. just as women will destroy every life she comes in contact with including their own in pursuit of happiness as defined by the herd.

Also to add having women stand for the truth allows women that know better but are confused and unsure due to the natural tendency to seek herd approval will more likely feel comfortable and confident with the truth. When a women decides to become a wife to her husband God does a strange thing. On the surface she is giving up her “strength”,independance’ etc,etc. (submitting to a man a beta husband?) The peace of mind and real power of a close family is very soothing to the mind and spirit. You can see it in a small way with comments Suz makes here. She used to qualify everything hanging on to what she knew of her blue pill self. Lately she doesn’t as far as i can tell and you can see the loosness and happiness from the comments of the small group of women Dalrock has on his blog. I see Dalrock’s blog as red pill friendly most women join or start commenting on mens blogs tend to want to derail it to make it female friendly rather than getting the red pill and joining the crew. Other women that don’t comment do read this blog.

David Collard: van Rooinek, what are they calling this new form of gonorrhea? The Wrath of God? Gomorrhea?

Gomorrhea. Hey, that’s pretty good. Spread it around (the word, not the bug.)

The sexual revolution is seriously over, this will kill it in a way HIV could not. Up til now, we had
(a) bacterial diseases, which were devastating but have been curable for decades and
(b) viral diseases which were incurable, but either
_i) are manageable (eg, herpes), or..
_ii) had only long term hypothetical risks (HPV) (hey if that didn’t stop smoking and sugar, it won’t stop sex either), or..
_iii) in the case of HIV, were extremely hard to transmit by natural sex. (HIV is mostly transmitted anally.)

But now we are back to the bad old days. UNTREATABLE Gomorrhea is doom.
– It is EASY to transmit. Easy. Even with condoms. It’s much, much easier to catch than HIV.
– You don’t have to wait decades to get seriously ill, the effects are soon manifest.
– You can’t “manage” it as with herpes or even HIV. It’ll just continue doing damage and suffering.
– Because it can neither be cured nor managed, nobody will ever marry the victims.
– Innocent victims — infected by rape or by an adulterous spouse — will suffer the same as the guilty. (I know a guy who caught it from his cheating wife. If that happened today, with the new strain, he’d be incurable too. Microbes don’t care if you are innocent.)
– It causes permanent sterility in women, and often in men too. Even if a cure is found a year or two down the road, the sterility cannot be undone. The last of the Tasmanians, died out even after the government and misssionaries put an end to the racial violence and made concerted efforts to save their race, because by that time they all had gonorrhea and were not able to reproduce.
– If you manage to have a child before being sterilized, the kid is likely to get infected in the birth canal, and get permanently blinded. Remember, it’s incurable in you AND your baby.

I guess where this is leading is: Pretend to agree with your girlfriends’ hamsters, but use their company as a chance to meet men. Get to know all their boyfriends and be friendly, but never flirty. When a guy you really admire gets dumped, try to snag him for yourself.

I feel for you, i have one step daughter, and it took a herculean effort to raise her to be better than the prevailing culture (she’s grown into a really great young lady).

My landlord is has three, very intelligent and strong willed girls. Him an his wife have to be tyrants on occasion to keep it all under control (I can hear the drama from here), but because of that will to do right by them, they’re going to turn out as well.
You just can’t let the culture raise em, or you (and they) are in for a world of hurt.

But when you’re 60, and you need someone to drive you to your oncologist four times a week and make sure you take your pills on time so you don’t lapse into a coma . . . well, hard to find a casual girlfriend willing to take care of your sorry ass at that point. And that’s the time you should reflect about how much easier you’ve had it that you haven’t had to be degraded or over-taxed with the complications of matrimony as they haul you out of your one-bedroom on a gurney after your mailman finds you sprawled out on the front porch unconscious because you took a fall and nobody in the world gave a damn.

Any man who has managed his life well as far as 60 – even those who ‘selected a good wife’ – would not go weak at the knees at the imagery you paint. Confronting death takes no more courage than confronting matrimony.

You read more like a cheap insurance salesman – and we older men have figured out how to deal with those as well.

Dalrock makes the argument that these women would eventually want to get married as it confers some sort of status onto them. But to my mind there are a few holes to this theory:

1) I don’t understand how marrying a beta loser would give them any status. Or how it would not bring forth shaming accusation of settling?

Even the average beta has to earn his way in the world, and this earns him a basic level of respect which women sense. This is part of what feminists are so envious of. It is true that marrying a standard issue beta won’t confer as much status as marrying a greater beta or alpha, but not marrying at all says she couldn’t even get an average beta. Her younger days need to be seen through the lens of having her fun before meeting her prince charming and him offering the maximum level of commitment. If her hamster has to spackle in part of the story for her that isn’t that much of a problem. But as I wrote above, if her “having her fun” doesn’t end in marriage it starts to look an awful lot like a slut who couldn’t keep a man. As Country Lawyer pointed out on this or another thread, women are very sensitive about this kind of thing. It doesn’t have to make logical sense to you as a man to be true. This is why we are hearing so much carping about “peter pan” men who won’t man up and marry those sluts.

Lol Dalrock, are you saying that all the feel-good propaganda…hmm, sorry…”advice” that girls have been forcefed… ahem once again i apologize… “proffered” has NOT been good advice all along?? Who would have thought? Well now, here’s to hoping it doesn’t fall on deaf ears!

In all seriousness- I’ve only recently become a reader here and i wanted to say that I appreciate what you are doing and look fwd to many more fine posts. I will drink to your health, kind sir!

Apparently this line was a hit over at CF. It struck such a nerve I thought someone here might enjoy it (and thank you moderators for letting me preserve it from the “memory hole”:

Ever see “Bridezilla’s”? Many weddings are the entitlement princess parade and the sole purpose of them is to spend a lot of money on her and let her be the center of attention (like Kim Kardashian). The larger message of the commencement speech though is how we have actually dumbed-down achievement. Actual achievement is too much hard work for most people. At the same time most women are being promiscuous they make an even bigger show of ceremony and expensive white wedding gowns. It’s as if they are salving whatever is left of their consciences with a bigger “me” show.

Weddings used to be a celebration of something, a starting of something entirely new. Now it’s more often a primp parade fluffed with as much adulation upon the promiscuous bride as we can stomach, and our credit can bear. A celebration of what? Cessation of promiscuity?

I was just re-reading Dalrock’s list of things a woman should (not) do if she wishes to marry, and asked myself what it would look like if I reversed the sexes. In other words; a man seeking to marry being advised that he has all the time in the world, that he should travel and date lots of women etc etc – and of course the regretful refrain at a wedding is always – at least over here – another good man gone! To which the groom concedes that he had a good innings. It just doesn’t seem like particularily good advice for someone set upon the idea of matrimony – more like advice for a wealthy playboy! but it is not entirely crazy because experience and time clearly are on a man’s side – a man cannot become pregnant after all – and women do like men of the world.

Is this yet another case of women merely imitating men (Penis Envy)? – and thus getting it once again, to their detriment, entirely wrong?

“*** if her “having her fun” doesn’t end in marriage it starts to look an awful lot like a slut who couldn’t keep a man. As Country Lawyer pointed out on this or another thread, women are very sensitive about this kind of thing. It doesn’t have to make logical sense to you as a man to be true. This is why we are hearing so much carping about “peter pan” men who won’t man up and marry those sluts.”

Women want to be sluts, act like sluts and have sex like sluts.

They just don’t want to be seen as sluts, or have someone call them sluts.

…and the reason they do not want to be seen as sluts or be called out as sluts, is because they know that if they are ‘outed’ as sluts, Mr Right will not marry them and they will be shunned by all right thinking people. Perhaps that is why (in the States) marriage is seen as so important; for a bastard child implies ‘easy’. Really a case of having their cake and eating it.

…and until such time as women once again start to police their own sex, chaste(ish) women will always fall prey to the suspicion that they are sluts – to their detriment.

I imagine that being a slut is a lot of fun. Because of the way hypergamy works in practice, ordinary women can have better sex – in terms of “quality” of partner – than most men can dream of. And there is no downside as long as all the other women are ex-sluts too.

I think that (apex fallacy) female sluts assume that all males are also having copious sex on demand, and that men will have no choice but to man-up when they realise that all women are equally promiscuous. They are, I believe, wrong on both counts.

I read the CNN article about the “sex kitten”. I disagree the article was about her romanticizing the betas she spurned. It’s more about her realizing that her hookups got her nothing and the damage it did to her body, soul and spirit. She also said her hookups created feelings in her of “victory and devastation” — more confirmation that for women, casual sex is first and foremost about power.

The author also makes the error that “sex is complicated”. No, it isn’t. We human beings complicate sex and sexual conduct by misusing it and failing to understand and appreciate the strength of its ability to bond a man and woman to each other.

Finally, the author goes through great gyrations and machinations to discuss her past. But when all the rationalization is stripped away and her hamster is exhausted, it all amounts to what has been written so many times before:

“I was a slut. For a time I loved it, until it wore me out. Plus, I didn’t get what I wanted, which was one of the alpha studs to commit to me and marry me. (You really think I would have written this f**king article if Mr. Big had come along with a ring and a date?) I’m really just a romantic softie at heart. I love flowers, candlelight dinners and moonlit walks on the beach (followed by the roguring of my life, one of which I unfortunately haven’t had since Alpha McGorgeous left me shaking and sparking on the floor of my studio apartment back in 2005). So I’ve left behind my slutty ways. All I ever really wanted was a nice guy who would treat me right.”

Opus, yes to apex fallacy. Women are trying to emulate the only men they see, because when a woman looks for a man, she looks upwards.

I was pleased to see a recent comment here that agreed with my recollection, that when the Austin Powers Era hit, women really did have sex with men in general. But then their hypergamy kicked in, and ordinary men lost their lustre, particularly after their mass neutering by the Sisterhood.

I am still trying to complete my dissection of the hamster. I am getting to the stage that I think women equate attention with power. To be the cynosure of all eyes. Some ethologist, discussed in one of Robert Ardrey’s classic books, did a lot of work on alphaness, and equated it in part to which member of the primate band the other monkeys looked at most. There are two ways to get visual attention, to be the most powerful male or the most attractive female. Perhaps this explains why really cute women seem to have an almost masculine confidence.

One thing I notice about sitting at the head of the table is that other family members are forced to make an effort to look at you.

Indeed. The 50 YO woman has a daughter and a son by a sperm donor who bought ski lessons and gear for the kids, but otherwise does not support them. She has 5 men who are there for the kids for various reasons.

The 47 YO woman has two sons and helps a niece. She had her sons herself. There were no men she wanted to share her life with at the time she had her sons. She says:

She is friends with families with fathers for her boys. “But when the boys go off to college, I would like to be partnered, to enjoy life with a companion,” she said.

IOW: “I wanted kids, I want help taking care of my kids, but I don’t want to live with someone else who helps with the kids. I want men to be there for the kids when I want the men there, so I can decide how much influence the men have on their lives. And I don’t want to have to be tied to a man.”

This 47 YO takes the cake, though. She doesn’t want a man when she’s young, but she expects a man to be there when she has her kids in college. So when she’s about 60, THEN she will want a man.

Question for this woman: Why, exactly, should any man want you at the end of your life? You will have nothing to offer that a man cannot get from a younger woman or simply have hired out. Your sexual attractiveness will have long since dissipated. You will have no helpmate qualities or domestic services that cannot be obtained through hiring out. Since you would not let any man invest in you or commit to you when you were younger, a man has far less reason to do so now. Your wish for male investment in the twilight of your life, when you want it and when it is convenient for you, is the height of presumptuousness and self-centeredness.

@deti:
That 47 year old lady reminds me of this exchange from http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/culture/blogs/all-men-are-liars/the-no-problem-problem-20120523-1z51y.html
“Consider this: Psychotic female head case (Sarah Connor) raises dysfunctional son (John) “independently” – which means using a series of disposable men: Kyle Reese (sperm donor), Myles Dyson (white knight) and the Terminator (emasculated male).She doesn’t have to look after any of them. Doesn’t need to keep house, cook or have sex with them. They though, have to sacrifice themselves for her.The perfect feminist fantasy penned by the thrice-married feminist, James Cameron (whose philosophy has played out SO well in his life).

Feminism is not about equality between the sexes. It is all about equality when it suits, and preferential treatment (chivalry) the rest of the time. It is something YOU need to wake up to.
Feminists have long demanded equality, from the time they loudly demanded the vote while their brothers and husbands were conscripted to fight in the trenches of WWI. There is no record of them demanding conscription – that would have been REAL equality.
Feminists, demand equality all you like. Be worried when men actually give it to you.

Commenter
Spike Location
Date and timeMay 25, 2012, 02:27PM
“
You also forget the string of men she used along the way to teach herself and John to be a “great military leader” 😉

Commenter
Bender Location
Date and timeMay 25, 2012, 04:59PM
“
Of course. When Dyson is confronted, Sarah Connor berates him “You F**kin men.. you think you’re so f*Kin creative…you don’t know what it is like to really create something, to feel it grow inside you…”
There was also a scene, deleted in the original movie, in which John and Sarah cut open the Terminator’s head and get to the chip. She wants to break it and leave him, saying that he isn’t needed.
This isn’t Cameron’s only exploration of feminism. Who can forget Titanic with Leo di Caprio (Jack) sacrificing himself for Rose ( Winslet)?

C’mon, add a “man up” to the end of that speech, you know you want to.

You’re making a lot of the fact that marriage involves a lot of work… well yeah, but that point wasn’t in debate, was it? As you have suggested, men of my generation have been lied to about this, but those of us who have taken the red pill, as I’m sure Firepower has, have actually come around to the truth of the matter. A successful marriage takes a lot of work, especially it seems, for the man – let’s take that as a given. Shock that marriage is harder than anticipated isnt whats making us stay away though, it’s more a matter of marriage being too much work and risk for too little reward. Hark work for an equitable reward is admirable, hard work for mediocrity and a ticking time bomb of risk is insanity.

The example you gave of a man marrying and working his ass off for years just so that he will have someone to take care of him when he is older is just laughable in today’s climate of easy and trivial divorce and western feminist culture. Maybe in my parents generation that was a reasonable thing to expect, but the man who assumes that his modern feminist indoctrinated wife is still going to be there care for him when he is old, sick and too enfeebled to keep giving her the feel-goods is likely to be in for a rude shock.

On the Terminator movies, I have a slightly different take. John is a male Messiah figure, protected with her life by his mother. There are elements of the Virgin Mary in her mythos. She is devoted to her son, and certainly keeps house for him in the Sarah Connor Chronicles.

She does have a feminist hissy fit in Terminator 2, but John tells her to cool down, and she does.

The actress who plays Sarah Connor in the films is that rariety, a believable action woman. To some extent, this is true in the Sarah Connor Chronicles, altho’ that actress is duller tho’ prettier. The Summer Glau character is certainly not favoured by the Sarah Connor character, who seems to mistrust and dislike the fembot. No sisterhood there.

Despite the manosphere’s vehement desire that women be punished for their debauchery with spinsterhood, it is safe to assume the never married figures express a growing trend of cohabitation rather than women eschewing or delaying marriage. My brother is 27 and of the two dozen or so couples in his social sphere only 2 are married (both upper middle class), the rest simply cohabitate and are waiting to get married when they are financially secure. Financial security, given inflation and the stagnant growth of real wages maybe a significant factor in delayed marriage.

The female ‘losers’ are few and far between, men simply desire sex more than women and the sex ratios will ensure women get to have their cake and eat it too.

I refused to view Terminator 2, for the primary reason that the first movie stood alone, the secondary reason that T-2 was clearly a case of substituting special effects for plot, and the third reason that I immensely prefer “Predator” as a story, a film, and a movie.

Regarding “roguring” vs. “rogering”, this is clearly one of those words that varies across the Anglosphere. Perhaps the spelling depends on the colo(u)r of the sky above the writer on any given day?Let’s ask Elmer…

You missed another key ingredient on that 47 year old. She doesn’t make very much money. So not only does she expect someone to step up and marry her when the kids are gone I would also bet she has expectation on their income.

Not only is she tired of being alone I’ll be she is plenty tired of living paycheck to paycheck.

For the life of me I cannot figure out how women in her situation see themselves as truly desirable. That any man of means who has survived a divorce and managed to rebuild some wealth would EVER consider that woman a good bet. She has clearly demonstrated her life view and it certainly places men in the disposable category.

Johnycomelately – ” …the never married figures express a growing trend of cohabitation rather than women eschewing or delaying marriage.”

This would seem a valid point. Cohabitation is certainly on the rise.

”The female ‘losers’ are few and far between, men simply desire sex more than women and the sex ratios will ensure women get to have their cake and eat it too.”

This point, not so much.

I think it would be hard to define just what constitutes a female “loser” in this context.

But, to the extent that marriage remains a status symbol for women, the women who only cohabitate without marrying will not have that status. They certainly won’t get “Their Special Day”.

And, seeing how many woman have previously been able to cash-out of marital relationships with “cash and prizes”, those who leave non-marital cohabitation relationships are denied* the chance to be given half of his stuff by the courts.

It may not seem like there are many female losers, but there would seem that there will be fewer female “winners” with cohabitation than there would be with Marriage 2.0

* This is, of course, and over-statement, as women could well petition the court to consider the relationship to have been a Common Law marriage, putting them back in line for half his property – but I think you get the general point that under Marriage 2.0 they are guaranteed that property.

“Despite the manosphere’s vehement desire that women be punished for their debauchery with spinsterhood”

Can we please stop with this nonsense? The Manosphere merely realizes that a society can function only if there are clear consequences to people’s actions. If a legally responsible adult repeatedly plays with a hand grenade despite being warned not to do so, and then has his hand blown off, it’s not schadenfreude to say ‘I told you so’. So if a woman’s hypergamy is running rampant, she shouldn’t be surprised if she becomes a spinster, because actions have consequences. Simple as that. Recognizing this isn’t schadenfreude, because rampant hypergamy is a personal choice, not a misfortune.

“the rest simply cohabitate and are waiting to get married when they are financially secure”

How states view cohabitation varies from state to state. Some states don’t recognize common law marriages. Others, mostly in the American South, do recognize them (or at least used to 20 years ago), but there are requirements before a cohabitation arrangement will be viewed as a common law marriage. Generally they are: the man and woman represent themselves to the public as husband and wife; living together “openly and notoriously” as husband and wife for a period of time (usually 10 years or more); the man and woman assuming the traditional gender roles associated with husband and wife (husband supports family; wife keeps and maintains home and rears children), joint property ownership, etc.

I think that as men continue to find ways to avoid marriage and support obligations, the law will probably catch up to them, at the behest of women and their myriad interest groups. Women will work to extract money from any possible source. So if men decide to cohabit, they could be declared a woman’s common law husband in as little as a year, or even less. I’ve heard of men keeping separate residences from their female longtime companions just for this very reason: if the law changes, they do not want under any circumstances to be viewed as a common law husband. Cohabitation and pooling everyday living resources is the single greatest indicator of a “common law marriage”.

Johnycomelately
Female losers are not aware until the end of the game. Spinsterhood is no entitlement to a man’s labourhood. Childless is better still. You have got to understand a woman on the carousel is on top of the world. Got that dick in her ass,college degree on the wall, good paying career and has her shit so together she doesn’t have to answer to anybody. Hell,Obama is going to hook her up with free birth control pills. Women don’t pay or get their lifes prize until after fertility is gone. The late 30’s and 40’s. A 22 year old women has no chnace of being able to put that together. Shacking up with a guy is a good way for a woman to find herself a desperate spinster. That is why they get pregnant to lock in the state and the dick of the month. Throw in a male birth control pill and I’ll fill out a subscription card to a womens magazine and quit my job to become a comedian. See comment from Interested. That is hell on earth for a woman. Take away the experience of a child growing to adulthood and replace that with memories of all of the dick she got and lesbian lovers and threesomes and see how she feels then about things.

I think marriage matters very, very much to American women. Marriage legitimizes, validates and affirms women. It gives them self-worth. And not the elope kind of marriage or the marriage before the judge or the justice of the peace. No, it’s full state-sanctioned legal marriage that women want, together with all the trappings, benefits and emoluments thereof.

In Sweden cohabitation is big. Many couples will wait to marry a couple of years after having children. Break ups are slightly more common than in marriages, but the percentage of children never drops under 70 or something at 17 YO for children living with both parents, even though Sweden has an illegitimacy figure of 50 or something.

But somebody wrote about an interesting childlessness figure for female graduates in the UK (35-40 % for 40 YOs or something).

About 40 % of childless Swedish 30 YO women born in 1970 were not childless anymore at 35.

But when you’re 60, and you need someone to drive you to your oncologist four times a week and make sure you take your pills on time so you don’t lapse into a coma . . . well, hard to find a casual girlfriend willing to take care of your sorry ass

You’ve obviously never heard of Tom Leykis’ views on this subject.

70-year-old couples routinely get divorced today; now, she also takes that long-saved, hard earned PENSION to boot. Basing a Sanctimonious Marriage on who gets the hot potato of changing the adult diaper is a poor foundation.

Middle-age adult children don’t even take care of their parents today. If inheritors of accrued wealth who shared a bloodline no longer do it, those linked by a paper contract are less dependable.

You have bought into the Past Marriage Ideal. That model is inoperable today. You and athol inadvertently describe it as work – drudge work of inordinate effort for the chance that your spouse “may” stick around. “Hey kids! Game your wife, be cautious of her moods, work extra hard to get sex, watch what you say, cook dinner and rub her feet! You too, O 20-something, can join in our fun!” Misery loves company.

Better to be a Man. Have investments and a pension that take care of YOURSELF and release the delusion that a senior citizen marriage will fare any better than the three you had at even more youthful points in your life.

…those of us who have taken the red pill, as I’m sure Firepower has, have actually come around to the truth of the matter. A successful marriage takes a lot of work, especially it seems, for the man – Hard work for an equitable reward is admirable, hard work for mediocrity and a ticking time bomb of risk is insanity.

The example you gave of a man marrying and working his ass off for years just so that he will have someone to take care of him when he is older is just laughable in today’s climate of easy and trivial divorce and western feminist culture. Maybe in my parents generation that was a reasonable thing to expect, but the man who assumes that his modern feminist indoctrinated wife is still going to be there care for him when he is old, sick and too enfeebled to keep giving her the feel-goods is likely to be in for a rude shock.

I wrote a Memorial Day tribute to an old veteran. It wasn’t applicable – but it IS now – to include HIS wife suddenly announced to him one day in their 80’s that she wanted a divorce so she could “find herself.” She thought marriage was too “restricting” and took over half his money to blow on travel. It seems just because granny has gray hair and look sweet, does NOT mean she doesn’t fall for the Feminist Drivel Propaganda.

Firepower:
“Better to be a Man. Have investments and a pension that take care of YOURSELF and release the delusion that a senior citizen marriage will fare any better than the three you had at even more youthful points in your life.”

Yes! By all means! Follow the feminist lead and suppress yet another natural male desire – the desire for progeny. (Not to mention female affection and companionship…)

GTOW is a good solution for many many men; it’s a valid way to work around feminism in our society. So is Relationship (Marriage) Game. Marriage is harder than GTOW, and the risks are greater. To many (if not most) men, the potential benefits are greater too. I hope you don’t think GTOW automatically makes men invulnerable to feminism, and I hope that fallacy isn’t a lure you’re using to sell it. And I especially hope you didn’t intend to deride men who are willing to risk more than you are, in order to possibly gain more than you want.

@Poester regarding the “new” Vista machine.
Hey I got it new-used for free.Not liking it much.It is faster than my old 1988 machine,that had 88 upgraded to Millenium and then to Xp.All my computers have been free hand-me -downs.
Wow what a bear to use whilst hungover.Oh,Will never drink again!
(yeah right)

Suz
Yes! By all means! Follow the feminist lead and suppress yet another natural male desire – the desire for progeny. (Not to mention female affection and companionship…)

Why DO you girls keep insisting that female affection and companionship is only exclusive to a man-made legal contract called “marriage?”

Female affection and companionship exists IN ABUNDANCE OUTSIDE of marriage. Dozens of girls, as compared to one who’ll NEVER look any better than she does today.

Don’t fall for that HBD jazz. By the time your grandkids emerge, only about 25% (max) of YOUR genes exist in progeny – outnumbered by 75% of strangers’ genes. An even that paltry contribution diminishes with each successive generation.

Odd. Some men like the affection and companionship they find in marriage. They can’t seem to help themselves. It’s almost as if their desire for it might be innate.

“By the time your grandkids emerge, only about 25%…”
I’m pretty sure reproductive instinct isn’t much influenced by your statistics. Your last paragraph seems to imply that a smart man will overcome his inborn masculine nature, and adopt a rationally prescribed sex role. As if maybe gender were a social construct. Hmm. Where have I heard that before?

Better to be a Man. Have investments and a pension that take care of YOURSELF and release the delusion that a senior citizen marriage will fare any better than the three you had at even more youthful points in your life.

I don’t think that word means what you think it means. At least I”ve never heard real masculinity defined as total selfishness before.

Apollo does raise a good point: Many men today really don’t understand the rewards of a traditional marriage. All they see is the risks, and the failures. That’s certainly what you hear about in the manosphere anyway. The problem is the rewards are profound, but somewhat intangible.

Years gone by, young men would be apprenticed to older men to learn a trade, but they would also got to see into an older man’s life, see the rewards of going home to a family at night. Now, unless they come from an intact home, all they see is ‘Married with Children’.

How can anyone ever convince a 20 something guy that sex with your wife of 20 years is better by far than any random hookup he’s having? Not because she’s ‘hot’, but because we’ve spent 20 years getting good at it?

How can I explain to someone like Apollo that the amount of my genetic material in my kids is not what matters, but seeing my sons grow into strong successful men because i taught them to be strong men means everything?

MGTOW guys think they are getting the most out of life, but the’re really getting the least. You don’t win on defense.

I’m sure i can’t convince you of this, Ian could certainly do better, but the rewards are far greater than the work, but you’ve got to put the work in to see them.

Even if the divorce rate is 50%, that still means that half of all marriages don’t end in divorce.

I wrote a Memorial Day tribute to an old veteran. It wasn’t applicable – but it IS now – to include HIS wife suddenly announced to him one day in their 80′s that she wanted a divorce so she could “find herself.” She thought marriage was too “restricting” and took over half his money to blow on travel. It seems just because granny has gray hair and look sweet, does NOT mean she doesn’t fall for the Feminist Drivel Propaganda.

I’m not advocating to marry so you will have someone to take you to chemo (if I understood the context correctly), but just pointing out that what the media sells and what is actually happening are different things.

@ P Ray Your 6 point plan … has just 1 huge flaw:The assumption that your girl is going to be unaffected by her peers, their relational aggression and their judgments.

That’s what home schooling is for.

BTW Sunshine, i have 2 home schooled young men in need of good wives, one is about to graduate with a degree in computer engineering from RIT, and one just earned his Eagle Scout. Maybe we need to set up a red pill matchmaking service!

On the above spelling issue, my wife likes the word “rogering”. Men should try these words on their wives. Rogering comes from the common name of Roger given to a bull. Or so I am told. It means to give a woman a good seeing to, another expression my wife likes.

Hey, my point #6, although meant to be tongue-in-cheek, is turning out to be really useful in terms of generating marriage offers! Nice. This alleviates my worries about being stuck with five cranky spinsters for the rest of my life. 😉

“Many men today really don’t understand the rewards of a traditional marriage. All they see is the risks, and the failures … How can anyone ever convince a 20 something guy that sex with your wife of 20 years is better by far than any random hookup he’s having? Not because she’s ‘hot’, but because we’ve spent 20 years getting good at it?”

Agreed. But you have to marry the right girl, and that is a bit of a lucky dip. And you have to put in a lot of work. Even if you have a compliant woman, you still have to work hard. But yes, the quality of the sex I have with my wife now is better than ever. Sexual interest does decline, but not as much as I would have expected. And a man knows exactly what he likes later in life, partly because he has had more time to experiment.

I was thinking this morning that I have my household set up the way I want it. My wife put porridge and tea out for me this morning, and she had the washing machine humming away. But she is still high maintenance. I don’t think there are any women who are not.

@Dreadpiratkevin“Even if the divorce rate is 50%, that still means that half of all marriages don’t end in divorce.”
How many of those marriages are happy? You can live a sexless marriage, with an abusive, grasping and greedy person. It’s still an intact marriage.

“How can anyone ever convince a 20 something guy that sex with your wife of 20 years is better by far than any random hookup he’s having?”
Most men are not having random hookups. Your apex fallacy is showing. Also, the idea of the kind of man you consider “successful”.

“MGTOW guys think they are getting the most out of life, but the’re really getting the least. You don’t win on defense. “
I take it you have not heard of false rape accusations, relational aggression, preferential hiring based on gender or marital status?

How can I explain to someone like Apollo that the amount of my genetic material in my kids is not what matters, but seeing my sons grow into strong successful men because i taught them to be strong men means everything?
Strong for whom? Does strength imply integrity? So “weak” (since you refer to your children as “bulls”) men have none?

P.S. is the matchmaking club, who assigns the couples? ‘Cause I’d wonder if those people were racist or ageist. Some people believe that others of a different race but the same religion … “can’t be as religious as us”. Others believe all irreligious people are bad. Still others believe that “only dirty old men want to be with young women”.
Interesting questions, so I hope you have some answers.

PRay, I have a question for you. I have noticed on several threads that you have made comments about racism/racist people. I am just wondering what you are referencing, since I have not seen anyone else discussing race here at all.

@Sunshine
“Is there something objectionable about a girl maybe taking a few classes at a community college?”
That’s where your girls will learn the wonders of relational aggression and peer pressure so that those “icky boys who don’t measure up” should be avoided.
And some of the people telling them that will be the most outwardly pious and devout girls … who have 5 boyfriends in 2 years, contribute to an old folks’ home and get smashing drunk.

@Sunshine
“I have noticed on several threads that you have made comments about racism/racist people. I am just wondering what you are referencing, since I have not seen anyone else discussing race here at all.”
Do you assume the problem with never marrieds is only restricted to one race … and it’s a woman-only problem?
I am wondering if you understand it is as much a fact of seeing that men of all ethnicities face this problem.
Maybe people don’t discuss it because it is the elephant in the room.

Better to be a Man. Have investments and a pension that take care of YOURSELF and release the delusion that a senior citizen marriage will fare any better than the three you had at even more youthful points in your life.**

I don’t think that word means what you think it means. At least I”ve never heard real masculinity defined as total selfishness before.

Why do you think investing for your retirement is “total selfishness?”

@Sunshine:
Humour me, ’cause I don’t think that’s the case at all.
I’m hoping the tone and direction in the comments don’t come out looking like they came out of Stormfront.
And when people work to preserve the “way of life” … sounds like a history lesson.

I had to google stormfront to even know what you were talking about. It is a White Nationalist website. I see no place anywhere on this blog where comments could be construed as having the tone and direction of a White Nationalist website.

Firepower I have to agree with you on that one, investing and saving for your own well being is being responsible. Emotionally and pop culturally investing in another person and expecting them to take care of you is the definition of selfishness.

Apollo does raise a good point: Many men today really don’t understand the rewards of a traditional marriage. All they see is the risks, and the failures. That’s certainly what you hear about in the manosphere anyway. The problem is the rewards are profound, but somewhat intangible.

Years gone by, young men would be apprenticed to older men to learn a trade, but they would also got to see into an older man’s life, see the rewards of going home to a family at night. Now, unless they come from an intact home, all they see is ‘Married with Children’.

I do come from an intact home, as do many of my friends, and I am close friends with others of my age group who are currently married. My parents have a fairly successful marriage, and as for those in my age group it’s probably still too early to judge whether it’s going to last long term, but so far so good (no divorce at least). And what I’ve noticed from these examples of marriage that CURRENTLY seem to be successful is…. it doesn’t seem all that great. Ignoring my parents for the moment, because they come from a different generation, and things are different for them, what I see in the marriages my peers have is a whole load of work, added responsibility, nagging and hen pecking for the man, and very little in the way of rewards. The only rewards I have picked up on so far are infrequent sex, someone to go on holidays with, and someone to give you a lift when you want to go drinking. Theres children too I suppose, but my feelings there are somewhat ambivalent – I could take them or leave them, and the very real possibility of having kids that I get to pay for, but not actually raise if a divorce happens definitely tips the scale towards “can do without”.

And please note, these are the GOOD marriages I am aware of, and by GOOD I basically just mean not currently about to blow up. I also know a number of divorced and very unhappily married guys from my peer group who have been financially raped, been cheated on, had their kids taken away, etc.

So, as my reward for taking a huge risk in getting married, and putting in a heap of extra work to keep the little woman happy, I have a chance that my life MAY slightly improve over the happy relaxed, stress free existence I currently enjoy? Frankly, that’s a really crappy proposal.

Even if the divorce rate is 50%, that still means that half of all marriages don’t end in divorce

Yeah, but it doesn’t mean that those half of all remaining marriages are in any way happy or fulfilling. Even if I’m really generous and say that half of those remaining marriages that don’t end in divorce are good (or even just acceptable), that makes the odds 75% against a marriage being a good choice.

Thanks. I agree wholeheartedly with your earlier comment about Athols site by the way, and I was about to mention that earlier when I saw Ians response and got sidetracked. I mean, good on Athol for making the most of his marriage, and also for helping other married men do the same, but the first thing that occurred to me after reading a few of his posts was: Holy shit, this guys running round in circles just to motivate his wife to keep her side of the marriage vows that SHE agreed to.

My personal approach to choosing how I want to spend my time and what I want to do is based on the “value for money” principle, and considering the “rewards” on offer, marriage is just too damn expensive.

Apollo says:
“I mean, good on Athol for making the most of his marriage, and also for helping other married men do the same, but the first thing that occurred to me after reading a few of his posts was: Holy shit, this guys running round in circles just to motivate his wife to keep her side of the marriage vows that SHE agreed to.”

It’s a matter of perspective. As it’s been said, “Anything in life worth having is worth working for.” Life is a gamble, all of life. You could pour yourself into anything and lose it in a moment and all your work could be gone. The key is to stack the odds in your favor the best you can. That’s what Athol is doing more than anything else, helping men stack the odds in their favor (some women too). Nothing in life is guaranteed. When you realize that you may be able to view it with a little less pessimism and a bit more optimism.

My husband took the two of us away for an extended weekend. After we got home yesterday I thanked him for a wonderful time. He told me he enjoyed spending the time away with me, then he stopped and said, “No, I didn’t spend the time, I invested the time in us.” I know that may sound all gooey to some of you here, but it makes my point. It’s his perspective. I am the first to admit that it’s been a long time coming for him to receive dividends on his investment in our marriage, but we are both enjoying the windfall now. And we’re just getting started.

@Jacquie
“Nothing in life is guaranteed. When you realize that you may be able to view it with a little less pessimism and a bit more optimism.”
If nothing in life was guaranteed … you don’t mind people investing smartly, right?
How many business investments would you put your money in … that had thrice a 50% failure rate, the chance of you to lose half of what you worked for, and a portion of all your monthly earnings FOR LIFE?
Part of investing smartly involves people passing on deals they feel are not worth it.

P Ray says:
“Part of investing smartly involves people passing on deals they feel are not worth it.”

So then do you pass on the whole market, or just the ones that don’t look like they’ll pay any returns? If you shop around enough you may find something worth investing in is all I’m saying. But it’s all how you look at it.

Sorry Jacquie, have to agree with P Ray here. There’s proper risk assessment with which one approaches a business investment and then there is the callous approach, where one just throws caution to the wind and goes blindly ahead without thought of consequence. Marriage has become the latter. Sorry to be blunt; but your husband is lucky and so are you. 50 % or more husbands will not have that luxury and will instead have their sorry arses be between the authority of the state and the bitchiness of their ex-wives.

Very few business or economically minded people, with common sense, would place their money in investments that have a 50 % chance of failure. Fewer still would place their whole livelihoods, future children and their freedom at stake, for an investment with a 50 % chance of failure. It’s not just that nothing in life is guaranteed, it’s that you have a 50 % guaranteed chance of putting yourself, your children and your family through the divorce meat grinder with nothing to show for it but a bullet to the head to escape the pain.

Some of us are trying to put these pieces back together for use in traditional communities, but there is no way I will be advising men to marry under the pretense that ‘nothing in life is guaranteed’. No way!

Jacquie: “but we are both enjoying the windfall now. And we’re just getting started.”

Nice. I know what you mean, too. It’s like for nineteen of the past twenty-one years, my husband has been technically sitting in the driver’s seat, but I kept grabbing the wheel away from him so often that he just started to let go of it altogether. We were still moving down the road, but it was not very fun. Now that I’ve learned to stop trying to crawl into his lap and take over the car, he can see where he’s trying to go and I can sit back and enjoy the ride. On occasion I still try to jump in there, but now he just pushes me back into my own seat. Which is where I really want to be anyhow.

However, I think that without the so-called “red pill” awakening, the woman tends to try to grab the wheel, the dude gives it up, and then her subconscious mind is like, “Crap, no one is in control of this run-away car and there’s this dead weight sitting here. Time to open the car door and shove him out.” And then she does, moments before driving the car straight into a ditch. Everyone loses.

Perhaps I am too much of an optimist. I still want to believe that there is still some good even when I see so much that makes me sad and angry and I can only shake my head.

I have children who are now adults. I raised them differently than most of their generation but they are still imperfect just as all humans are fallible. I’ve always wanted for them to find a good mate, and be content for life. Even though my husband and I now realize that what we lived for a long time was not the best marriage, we thought it was good for a long time and I wanted that for my children. Someone good to be good with.

I am faced with the possibility of my son marrying a Christian girl who seems to fit all I’ve been reading about here and on other sites, and to be totally truthful has an attitude very much like mine when I met and married my husband(no red pill twenty-five years ago). I’m terrified of them marrying and she treating him badly. We’re trying to get through to him (my husband will meet with him alone this weekend). But I also don’t want to see him alone for life either.

Wish we had found the red pill alot sooner. I’m hoping its not too late.

Marriage is a joke….companionship? Buy a dog / Get a friend. affection? Get a prostitute or go to a strip club. Women are like used car salesmen…..they never have anything bad to say about themselves! They’re all great deals!

My position is somewhat between Jacquie and FeministHater. I’m there for a lot of reasons.

My position is this: you make a choice, you stick with it. Man or woman. But a lot of women don’t want to make hard choices, and then they don’t want to live with the good or bad consequences that flow from them. A lot of men are figuring this out.

I got married 16 years ago with no red pill. To make a very long story short, I didn’t make the best choice in a wife. I didn’t do the best job of vetting. I probably married too early and there were things Mrs. deti didn’t tell me about before we married. Had I to do this again, I probably wouldn’t. I’ve been given some lemons and am doing the best I can to make lemonade with them. That’s life, really. I made hard choices. I’m doing my best to live with them and so is Mrs. deti. FH is partly right. I’m not so much lucky, it is that Mrs. deti and I are CHOOSING to make the best of the consequences of hard choices we made.

Most women are shielded from making hard choices. And when they do make hard choices, most women are then shielded from the adverse consequences of those choices. The way I have made this work with Mrs. deti is simply by requiring her to make her choices and then requiring her to walk those choices all the way out, good and bad.

But this is life, really. You choose to be a teacher over an engineer. You will work long thankless hours for low pay. You choose to be a lawyer over an actor? You will work long hours, the pay is good, and you get glory, but it’s drudgery and scut work much of the time.

Marriage is no different. Cupcake wants to marry F**kbuddy Rockbanddrummer? Fine. He’ll bang you till you can’t walk. Fun, fun fun, excitement, drama and intrigue. It’ll be nonstop tingles, honey — until he cheats on you with the groupie with the tight abs and the silicone tits. And that’s just the one you know about. You’ll be poor, because F**kbuddy is a shitty provider, so you’ll always have to work. Also, if you have kids with him, he’ll always be part of your life when the inevitable divorce happens.

You want to marry Ernie Engineer? Fine. He’ll love you and you’ll have a couple of kids by him. It will be boring, mundane, routine. He’s not as much fun as F**kbuddy, but Ernie comes home every night and does his one chore, giving the kids baths. He takes you on your week vacation somewhere. After your second one is born you don’t have to work because Ernie’s earning more at work so you can be a SAHM. You can’t afford a maid or a nanny, but Ernie is working from 7 to 7 every day and is tired when he gets home. So you will have to do 90% of the housework. You will need to run the house. You must do all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, dusting, ironing, laundry and picking up. If you don’t know how to do those things, you will need to learn how. Ernie’s also not as good looking or as drama filled as F**kbuddy. The sex isn’t as good as with F**kbuddy. But Ernie loves you, and he stays with you, and he provides for you and the kids.

The problem is that women want F**kbuddy to have Ernie’s work ethic; or Ernie to have F**kbuddy’s long c*ck and I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude. But you’ll have to make your hard choice, and learn to live with it.

DetiThe problem is that women want F**kbuddy to have Ernie’s work ethic; or Ernie to have F**kbuddy’s long c*ck and I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude.

In other words, “Fried Ice”.

But you’ll have to make your hard choice, and learn to live with it.

Athol’s site is for Ernie. There’s no equivalent for F’buddy. Funny how reality works out.

The problem we all agree on, is that women have a universal ejection seat button handed to them, with cash and prizes connected to it. The longer term cost of pushing that button is not at all made clear, either.

Women who don’t make the hard choice and PICK ONE and stay with him? They’re left out.

Women who don’t stay with the one they picked? They won’t find another man, and they’ll also be left out.

Ladies, you have hard choices to make. I suggest you go into it with a keen eye, select a good one and stay with him through thick and thin.

You are NOT going to get everything you want in a husband.

You are fooling yourself if you think you are everything your husband ever wanted. You are NOT. Your husband is compromising to spend his life with you, just as you are compromising to spend yours with him. You are choosing to be with him. You are not gracing him with your presence.

You are NOT perfect, you are NOT a princess, and you are NOT irreplaceable. If you leave, I can replace you eventually.

@ P Ray
Did you notice the bit where she talked about having them go to community college?

Not entirely sure what your question is. Yes, my daughter went to community college, just graduated in fact. I assume you mean she was subject to bad influences there. in fact she went largely on line, so it wasn’t a factor for , but to your point she was home schooled for the first 18 years of her life and she is very well grounded in our values, plus she grew up in a home with parents who really are very happy being married, and she is a young woman of exemplary character. Why are you so sure that her peers will negatively influence her, instead of the other way around? Yes she will hear feminist ideas, but I don’t think they will have much effect on her. Her goal is to be a wife and mother, when the right guy comes along. Her degree is a way to support herself until then. There are still women like that out there, rare though they may be.

@Dreadpiratkevin:
There are too few of the “so-called” nice women out there for the nice guys.
If 80% of women are only attracted to 20% of the men …
the remaining 80% of men must compete for the 20% of women.
And all this, while running the gauntlet of the 50% divorce risk, possibility that she has STDs that she has not mentioned, along with mental problems as a result

I knew a homeschooled girl who came to university. Child prodigy.
She went off the rails there, developed an alcohol problem, and become a grade-A feminut (along with an attraction to guys who abused her).
Homeschooled. Values.
So what?
Character is what you do when nobody is watching.

And please note, these are the GOOD marriages I am aware of, and by GOOD I basically just mean not currently about to blow up. I also know a number of divorced and very unhappily married guys from my peer group who have been financially raped, been cheated on, had their kids taken away, etc.

You’re making my point for me. Those are not good marriages. Those are stable marriages, maybe. You really don’t know what it’s like to be happily married. That’s kind of sad, and a sign of the times I suppose. Note I’m not implying it’s your fault either, I think there are probably more truly happily married people out there then you know, we just don’t make a great deal of noise about it, and we certainly don’t get any press. Does Athol seem like he’s in a sexless marriage? Ian Ironwood? I’m not. 23+ years in and sex is a daily event in our marriage, always has been. We may be the exception to the rule, but at least we prove it’s possible.

Yes, having a good and happy marriage takes a lot of work. What in life doesn’t that’s worth having? But it’s very much like getting in shape. If you’re very out of shape, working out is tremendously hard, but once you get in shape, it’s not only easy, it’s fun. 4 months ago I couldn’t run 1/2 a mile without dying. Today I just finished a 5 mile run, which I do at least 4 times a week now. It’s not hard, I really enjoy it. Making a marriage work is very much like that. My point in posting is simply to say it is possible, and while you are free to make you’re own choices, you ought to know what you’re giving up.

that makes the odds 75% against a marriage being a good choice. That’s a very misleading. You make it sound like you get in the marriage line and take whatever random woman you are handed. You have complete control over whom you marry, and a far greater amount of influence on her than you think once you are married. That’s kind of the whole point of Athol’s blog, isn’t it? I do get you’re point, but just because most people don’t make it work, doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

@Dreadpiratkevin
I’m glad to hear community college worked out for your daughter. This is what we had thought to do as well. We don’t have a problem with our girls getting some education and working at a job until they marry. We do hope they will marry rather young, and we don’t wish to pay for extremely expensive university tuition. We already pay an arm and a leg for private Christian school tuition.

^ Nice straw man you got there.
I need some for my house to keep the intruders away.
The point I am making: Stop giving men false hope – give them solutions.
The denial of reality is like being King Canute – you can’t hold back the tide.

@Dreadpiratkevin:
About that guy who “walked out his door and got hit by a bus”
If his house was “right next to” a freeway that is a violation of zoning laws.
If he was hit by a drunk driver/out of control bus his family should be able to claim insurance.
Either way it’s a point of failure by parties who should have been more responsible.
I hope the correct people were penalised.
Because you get less of the behaviour you punish, and more of the behaviour you reward.

Ok, so a single anecdote about a home schooler who lost her way is conclusive proof of, well something, but a first hand account about a marriage which does not fit your assumptions is false hope. OK. If saying that a) I’ve found marriage to be the most rewarding thing in life, and b) here’s a few observations I’ve made over 23 years of marriage on how to make it work is not offering solutions, I really can’t help you. You seem to want some kind of guarantee that nothing can go wrong, but no one can give you that. Other than complete surrender, what are your solutions?

I don’t need to hold back the tide, I just need to make sure my family is standing on the Rock.

@P RayAbout that guy who “walked out his door and got hit by a bus”
If his house was “right next to” a freeway that is a violation of zoning laws.
If he was hit by a drunk driver/out of control bus his family should be able to claim insurance.
Either way it’s a point of failure by parties who should have been more responsible.
I hope the correct people were penalised.
Because you get less of the behaviour you punish, and more of the behaviour you reward.

DreadpiratekevinI knew a guy who walked out his door and got hit by a bus.

What was the bus doing in his front yard?

And anyway, it is a poor analogy. What P Ray is saying is more along the lines of “Joe Doe was doing what everyone told him was the right thing to do in terms of living, and one day as he stepped out of the shower, a bus came roaring down the hall, smashed him to a pulp and drove on out through the wall. Amazingly he wasn’t killed, but when he awoke in the ICU everyone kept asking him What did you do to that bus? Why did you provoke that bus? Why weren’t you more careful to be nice to the bus? when he’s wondering what the hell a bus was doing in his house, and why the driver hasn’t been arrested yet.

In the next thrilling episode, Joe Doe finds out there is a restraining order out that requires him to remain 300 yards away from his own house, and from the bus that wrecked it….

Meanwhile, you insist if a bus smashes through his house, he should be more careful.

And PS: P Ray’s observation about the child prodigy woman is spot on the money – because women are not the same as men. Not physically, not mentally. Fathers need to take extra care about their daughters associates, and men need to be aware of who their wives friends are for reasons that should be obvious.

Keep laughing Dreadpiratkevin. You seem to want some kind of guarantee that nothing can go wrong, but no one can give you that
Nothing can go wrong … if the man loves the woman less than the woman loves the man.
Hey … it works for the “players” … who may be simply getting “the women who want them”.

Other than complete surrender, what are your solutions?
I’m working on it, but since you’re a guy married in the last generation … things have moved on since then, mmmkay?

I don’t need to hold back the tide, I just need to make sure my family is standing on the Rock.
You do what you gotta do, others will do what they gotta do.
If all is fair in love and war, who’s to say the man staying single or moving from relationship to relationship is “wrong”?
He can’t do neither … unless women enable him to. 🙂
Make marriage more attractive to men,
and more men will be married.
It’s not rocket science.

I temper my foul temper to engage in an adult discussion. Remind me to NEVER take seriously your self-stated Pharisaical piety in regards to Christian “statements” you make on this blog – or any others. Don’t EVER post on my blog. Beware.

The study of Economics is mainly the reduction of risk; thereby increasing the predictability of receiving reward for one’s work or the investment of one’s wealth. There is always the element of risk, which can never truly be removed, but can be mitigated to a point where the reward outweighs any possible outcome if said risk comes to pass. This can be applied to almost any scenario, micro or macro.

The ability of a man to predictably navigate the marriage market in order to have a positive outcome at the end, greatly enhances his willingness to invest in such a scenario. That’s common sense, right? I should hope so. Now, if the predictability of what marriage entails is removed or perhaps the ease with which a woman can divorce a man is increased, exponentially. The risk associated with marriage increases as a result. Now, if penalties are added to the already high risk of a woman divorcing her husband, you are sitting with a double burden being placed on a man. The man doesn’t just have to choose a mate wisely, he now has to trust her explicitly, woo to her every need and place himself at her absolute mercy. For if he doesn’t; he faces not just divorce, but child support payments, alimony payments and possible prison time if he cannot continue to perform his financial obligations.

Signing up for that sort of risk is borderline insanity. Instead of being able to string together a set of variables, which can then in turn be plotted on a graph, which one can use to understand how one’s decisions or acts impact a given variable(in this case the question of marriage). You are now left philosophising the inner workings of the female mind, including her hypergamic instincts and her incredible lust for shit-testing. There’s no predictably, no constant, it’s a mind game of the worst kind. Heads, she wins, tails you lose and she gets cash and prizes.

It boils down to a simple problem. When the act of divorce was hinged an the OBJECTIVE ability of a spouse to prove infidelity, abuse or neglect on the part of their partner, the element of risk associated with divorce could be mitigated to an acceptable level by a man. With the now SUBJECTIVE ‘no fault’ divorce element added, a husband has no real ability to mitigate said risk. Avoiding divorce and the meat grinder is directly linked to the wife’s happiness. Take away all the ideas about gaming your wife, or beating her shit-tests or trying to make her understand her hypergamic ways, you’re still left with that subjective element. The one hole in the plan. It all hinges on her happiness.

Until an objective requirement is used to determine a spouse’s ability to divorce, pull the ripcord, push the little red button, go nuclear; the risk to reward ratio of marriage cannot be based in rational mitigation of risk. Instead in rests entirely on one’s ability to read women correctly.

I’m sorry to say this, but it is wholly unacceptable to have men partake in such a risk.

Dreadpiratkevin
How can I explain to someone like Apollo that the amount of my genetic material in my kids is not what matters, but seeing my sons grow into strong successful men because i taught them to be strong men means everything?

Why should you CARE to take the effort to convince Apollo and his allies of anything?

You have absolutely NO idea how your sons will turn out. None – just like Jeffrey Dahmer’s religious father had no idea. I know plenty of kids with proper upbringings that aren’t worth a damn.

So, to convince others “how great it is”
IS failing today – that’s why we have 214 comment posts
like THIS.

Jacquie:
My husband took the two of us away for an extended weekend. After we got home yesterday I thanked him for a wonderful time. He told me he enjoyed spending the time away with me, then he stopped and said, “No, I didn’t spend the time, I invested the time in us.”

We always hear of this Lifetime Channel stuff, where HE is the one to bring the roses, mow the lawn, make the money, take HER out to dindin – while she watches GIRLS and microwaves Spaghetti-O’s for dinner…WHY OH WHY?

Apollo

Holy shit [athol’s] running round in circles just to motivate his wife to keep her side of the marriage vows that SHE agreed to.

@Firepower
Does your comment infer that a couple should never take time away from the usual routine or that the man should go alone? Spending time with someone you enjoy being with is not running round in circles. Then again another gentleman on this site attempted to explain that to you with apparently no success. The “running round in circles” comment has an envious tone to it, maybe because the one “running round in circles” gets daily sex.

Was that post not meant as a joke? I honestly thought it was. Sorry if I mis-read it, . Obviously I was trying to illustrate the foolishness of drawing conclusions from a single anecdote. Are were you seriously saying the the one home schooled girl you happened to know has any bearing on what my daughter will do? Surely we can keep this thread above the level of warring anecdotes.

@firepower-
You have absolutely NO idea how your sons will turn out. None – just like Jeffrey Dahmer’s religious father had no idea. I know plenty of kids with proper upbringings that aren’t worth a damn.

That’s the dumbest thing you’ve said yet..Clearly you’ve not a parent. I do in fact know exactly how my sons will turn out because they have in fact ‘turned out’. I’m guessing they are very nearly as old as you. In fact I could have told you ten years ago what they would be like now. Don’t pretend you know anything about parenting when you haven’t done it. You don’t.

Very religious means nothing. Neither does ‘proper’. In fact, Jeffery Dahmer father has written about his experience and concluded that he was far too detached and un involved with his son, and didn’t see him descending into darkness until it was far too late. He also has concluded that there was much he could have done to prevent what happened with his son. But I guess in your vast experience raising kids you know better.

So, to convince others “how great it is”
Have you raised children? Seen them graduate, earn awards, achieve things in their lives? I have. I know. You haven’t, You don’t.. My simple point was that such things make the risks and effort of marriage you describe worthwhile. Since I’ve been there, and you have not, on what basis can you tell me that I am wrong? Only a very young, or very foolish person is so anxious to discount the experiences of those who have done things they themselves have not.

Where did I ever say it was wrong to not get married? You’re putting words in my mouth. I couldn’t care less if you personally never get married. I think you’re missing out on a great deal of joy in life, but what’s that to me? I participate in these posts because I think it’s useful to get more than one point of view. You feel marriage is no longer worth the risk or the effort. OK. My experience is otherwise. I think that those who are considering marriage can benefit from hearing both sides. Why do you feel the need to attack me for it?

That’s the dumbest thing you’ve said yet..Clearly you’ve not a parent. Don’t pretend you know anything about parenting when you haven’t done it. You don’t.

So, my saying you have absolutely NO predetermined idea how your sons will turn out is dumb – to you. Can you pick the LOTTO numbers for me today? IRL, plenty of cases exist where “good kids” wind up bad. All to the shock of their deluded parents.

Fine. Similarly, if YOU don’t know what it’s like to be single and enjoying life without kids – then you don’t jackshit and should likewise shut up about it. Same goes for scripture and Christianity – if you’re NOT a pastor or Biblical scholar.

Gosh, DPK, if we have absolutely no idea how children will turn out, why do we send them to school? Why do we take them to Church? Why do we do anything that entails leaving an imprint on them? After all, if raising your children right has absolutely no bearing on how they turn out, what’s the point?

The truth is, we do and all that raising them right does have an impact. There’s going to be the oddball, always is. That just further proves the rule. Society has stopped raising children correctly and we are having a massive fall out, on a monumental scale, as a result, yet you and everyone else chooses to ignore it.

Children who grow up, without fathers, are more likely to be criminal, more likely to have broken families of their own. More likely to be on welfare, more likely to be despondent. All the evidence points to a huge reason for having fathers, yet society chooses to ignore that and flaunt the few successes of people from single mother households. Really great plan there.

Anyway, just because you seem to have had a good marriage and your children turned out great, we should ignore all the evidence piling up, get married and just accept our lot. Since, according to you, we cannot comment on marriage, children or anything remotely to do with it, as we have not partaken in it.

I guess no one has a right to comment on the issues of cannibalism, unless you’ve had a healthy dose of human meat to eat, right?

Fine. Similarly, if YOU don’t know what it’s like to be single and enjoying life without kids – then you don’t jackshit and should likewise shut up about it.

Yes, cause I was born married. Think before you type.

Same goes for scripture and Christianity – if you’re NOT a pastor or Biblical scholar.

I am in fact, both.

Why the animosity? I’ve been tying to treat you with respect, and tell you some things you couldn’t possibly know at your stage of life. I haven’t pushed my religion, I haven’t shamed you for your choices, I’m simply trying to fill in the blanks for those who haven’t gotten as far in life as I have. If you want to reject marriage for whatever reason, go ahead! But don’t you think it would be wise to get a full picture of what it is, or could be, before you do?

Firepower:
“You girls keep insisting that female affection and companionship is only exclusive to a man-made legal contract called “marriage”

Actually, no we don’t. Not most of the “girls” here anyway. You seem to be reading words that aren’t there. Nobody here objects to your anti-marriage sentiment, but this is a marriage oriented blog, written by a married man, for marriage minded men. If they’re here, do you think they haven’t already heard the advice you offer?

I have to agree with Dreadpiratkevin –
“Only a very young, or very foolish person is so anxious to discount the experiences of those who have done things they themselves have not.”

I’m a little confused. You’re taking me to task by agreeing with me? I think you might be confused about who said what. I stopped with the italics because I was screwing up the HTML. I can see how my lack of quotes could lead to confusion, Mia Culpa.

firepower said:
“You have absolutely NO idea how your sons will turn out. None – just like Jeffrey Dahmer’s religious father had no idea. I know plenty of kids with proper upbringings that aren’t worth a damn.”

The refutation was me.

But no, if you have no kids, you are not in a position to lecture me on what I can or cannot know about my kids, and no one with kids would make that statement. Talk about marriage all you like, it’s sort of what we do here. But don’t try and put a value on someone else’s subjective experiences. How could anyone possibly know what intangible value can be derived from a happy long term marriage, it they have never been in one? You’ll notice I’m not arguing about the case against marriage, much of what has been said here is very true. Just trying to offer the other side of the coin.

I’m a little confused. You’re taking me to task by agreeing with me? I think you might be confused about who said what. I stopped with the italics because I was screwing up the HTML. I can see how my lack of quotes could lead to confusion, Mia Culpa.

firepower said:
“You have absolutely NO idea how your sons will turn out. None – just like Jeffrey Dahmer’s religious father had no idea. I know plenty of kids with proper upbringings that aren’t worth a damn.”

The refutation was me.

But no, if you have no kids, you are not in a position to lecture me on what I can or cannot know about my kids, and no one with kids would make that statement. Talk about marriage all you like, it’s sort of what we do here. But don’t try and put a value on someone else’s subjective experiences. How could anyone possibly know what intangible value can be derived from a happy long term marriage, it they have never been in one? You’ll notice I’m not arguing about the case against marriage, much of what has been said here is very true. Just trying to offer the other side of the coin.

Well yes, it seems Firepower was the one who wrote that. The lack of quotes threw me off and I apologise for that.

Now onto the next bit. I don’t remember lecturing you on anything to do with your actual children. I don’t place any value on someone else’s subjective experiences, unless they can show me some objective evidence of how their positive experiences can be applied to my life through some practical means.

The other side of the coin, according to you, is that you’ve had a happy marriage. I don’t really see the point, as the author of this blog also states that he has a happy marriage. Yet he is still warning us… Until such time as someone actually shows, through factual evidence, not a straw man or one of their mythical fantasies, that the average man truly does get a rewarding prospect when he marries; and that his wealth, health and ‘happiness’ really does go up DUE to marriage and is the cause of his better life rather than his better life being the cause of a mildly successful marriage, I will genuinely seek to change my opinion on the overbearing risks of marriage.

Honestly right now, I think that’s impossible and I’ve explained why I think it’s impossible. The legal and moral implications of the current marriage ideals are not based on Biblical marriage and therefore I will not sanctify them by showing my support of them.

@ feminist hater said
“Anyway, just because you seem to have had a good marriage and your children turned out great, we should ignore all the evidence piling up, get married and just accept our lot. ”

Where’d you get that from?. Ian started with a post about how hard it is to have a good marriage, and basically said it takes a real man to do it. He’s right. I’ve tried to explain, though not as well, some of the things that make that hard work worthwhile. Everyone agrees that finding the right woman to marry is difficult to near impossible and a heck of mountain to climb if you go that way. How is any of that accepting your lot? It is advice from men who have done it on how to do it successfully. You should embrace all the evidence piling up, and then arm yourself with as much good intel and strategy you can possibly get should you decide to pursue marriage today. Men may be at a massive disadvantage, but you’re not helpless, you still have choices. Only listening to those who have rejected marriage, or failed at it won’t help you make those choices wisely.

Have you raised children? Seen them graduate, earn awards, achieve things in their lives? I have. I know. You haven’t, You don’t.. My simple point was that such things make the risks and effort of marriage you describe worthwhile. Since I’ve been there, and you have not, on what basis can you tell me that I am wrong? Only a very young, or very foolish person is so anxious to discount the experiences of those who have done things they themselves have not.

It’s your statement that no one can say you’re wrong unless they’ve partaken in having children and a marriage themselves. Which discounts the huge amount of human energy taken by people to LEARN from other’s mistakes so as not to continue to repeat them again and again. Not saying that you’ve made a mistake, merely that there are married and divorced men out there who we can and do learn from, so as not to make the same mistake.

The accepting our lots comes from the idea that you still think marriage is worthwhile. I’ll state it bluntly, the current marriage 2.0 is not, if you’re lucky enough to find a wife who subscribes to marriage 1.0, then yes, it is. However, the chances are so slim that if you do get married you have a rather large chance of being kicked out the home and having your life destroyed. According to you, we cannot challenge your view because we haven’t experienced marriage or children, however, to experience that we would have to accept out lot within the marriage climate. Does that explain it a bit better?

@feminist haterUntil such time as someone actually shows, through factual evidence, not a straw man or one of their mythical fantasies, that the average man truly does get a rewarding prospect when he marries; and that his wealth, health and ‘happiness’ really does go up DUE to marriage and is the cause of his better life rather than his better life being the cause of a mildly successful marriage, I will genuinely seek to change my opinion on the overbearing risks of marriage.

A very honest post. BTW, you weren’t lecturing me on parenting, firepower was.

The only thing I can say to you is, don’t be average. Yes, statistically the odds are crap for men when it comes to marriage. Don’t be a statistic. The only marriage that you need worry about is your own, not society at large. You don’t need society at large to change, you just need one good woman, and then work your butt off to be a good man and make it work. Forget the big picture and focus on your own life and witness. Just because most have moved away from a Biblical marriage doesn’t mean you have to. It’s only if good Christian men will defy the odds, do the hard work and model true Christian marriage that we can redeem the time. I’m not saying be foolish or blind of stupid, you already know all the bad stuff, but when have the worlds odds ever been in favor of doing God’s will?

It’s your statement that no one can say you’re wrong unless they’ve partaken in having children and a marriage themselves.

I’m simply saying that no one can evaluate the worth of those experiences unless they have had them. This is in response to the idea that marriage is simply not worthwhile at all any more due to the risk and effort involved. These are some of the things I have found that make marriage worthwhile, but it’s subjective, you have to experience it for yourself to say if it’s worthwhile.

It may seem like a small thing to see your son awarded his Eagle Scout rank compared to all the risks and pitfalls of marriage 2.0, but until you experience it, you just can’t know the feelings of pride, accomplishment, and satisfaction this brings to your life. It’s too subjective to be evaluated from the outside. That’s my larger point, although it seems I’m making it poorly. In a cold, financial calculation marriage today is not worth it, but there are other intangibles that need to be factored in, and you can’t know the true worth of them until you experience them. You can certainly learn from others mistakes, but you can also learn from their successes.

Dreadpiratkevin, perhaps if you couched your message less in terms of “Looky what I did! You can do it too, but I won’t tell you what it is that I did!” and more in terms of “here’s what has worked for me” you might not be so off putting. Isn’t there something in your church about pride and humility, and how one is to be preferred to the other?

There is a certain “I’m all right, Jack” tone to messages from men who are for the moment in a good situation in their marriages, that can be a bit difficult for other men to put up with. Especially those that may be in a bad situation of some sort or another. Some of your text looks a bit like gloating, although you probably do not intend for it to do so.

Yes, AR, I see your point. I am in Dreadpiratkevin’s situation, a fairly happy marriage. But it really has been a maze combined with a minefield. I came close to marrying the wrong girl. I made bad moral choices with the the girl I did marry, about sex. We have had some ding-dong arguments. I sort of intuited a lot of Game, but I was pretty chumpish at times. I don’t think our marriage was ever at serious risk of failing, but there were some fraught times. I don’t know what I would do, if I were an American man now, instead of an Australian man then, but I would think very carefully. One of the Christian virtues is Prudence. I would probably have to marry, for religious reasons, but I would be very cautious indeed.(Just an aside. It is quite possible that humans, especially women, simply don’t really understand what their deepest feelings are. As the guy said earlier, feminists think equality will make them happy, but it doesn’t, and they can’t verbalise it. I recommend that anyone interested in the science of this Googles “Trivers” and “Self-Deception”. Two women, by my count, on this blog have lately admitted that they spent decades giving their husbands a substandard marriage, and they are the more self-aware women. I see something similar with my wife, who might not consciously verbalise it, but sometimes acts as if she were my housemaid. Actions speak louder than words.)

Anonymous-
I’m sorry you took it that way. The topic at hand wasn’t how do you get there, the question was is it worth it. I don’t mean to diminish anyone else’s struggles with marriage, or imply that I haven’t had plenty of them myself, only to say that, contra to what others on the thread believe, I’ve found the struggles to be worth it, and here’s why I think they are worth it. I just happen to be in a place where I’m seeing the payoff clearly. if I’m a little smug about that, well, there’s worse things to be smug about. There are guys lining up to tell you how terrible and bleak it is for men these days, but darn few trying to tells younger guys why they should even bother. Would it be more effective to say something like ‘yeah, marriage today really sucks, but if you fight through all the bad stuff it can be, you know, sort of OK?

David CollardI don’t know what I would do, if I were an American man now, instead of an Australian man then, but I would think very carefully. One of the Christian virtues is Prudence. I would probably have to marry, for religious reasons, but I would be very cautious indeed.(Just an aside. It is quite possible that humans, especially women, simply don’t really understand what their deepest feelings are.

To restate what I’ve pointed out before, we all swim in a bath of feminism to some extent and thus carry around unstated, not-thought-through feminist premises in our heads to some extent. All of Dalrock’s “interview questions” for a prospective wife certainly apply in general and so far as I can remember would apply to church going men. Prudence falls out all over the place from his questions.

I speculate that every American man under the age of, erm, 60? 70? has been exposed to the notion of egalitarianism as the ideal in marriage….with the exception of those raised explicitly to reject that notion, a minority for sure. A Marxist idea in direct conflict with evo-bio / Genesis / reality. Cognitive dissonance is our normal state thanks to this.

That’s why stating the obvious, rather than assuming it, is so important. Because it isn’t always so obvious.

@DreadPiratKevin“There are guys lining up to tell you how terrible and bleak it is for men these days,”
Hey, no fair, I also give examples.

but darn few trying to tells younger guys why they should even bother.
and yet no concrete steps or what you observed about those who were unworthy.
If you can’t condemn trickery … don’t exhort men to virtuousness.
Milquetoast pastors are doing a dis-service to the men in their flock.

Would it be more effective to say something like ‘yeah, marriage today really sucks, but if you fight through all the bad stuff it can be, you know, sort of OK?
I sure hope you use that attitude on your sons.
Do you have any words for them if their marriages fail?

Dreadpiratkevin, Firepower can be difficult at times. That’s how he is, for whatever reasons. Maybe if you asked he’d tell you, but then again perhaps not.

I’m not sure you have read much of Dalrock’s site yet, so perhaps you don’t realize what a wide range of experience exists among the men who comment here. Some men have been through the divorce machine, not by their own choice, despite doing all the things that churches routinely tell men to do. Other men found themselves unable to marry all through their 20’s, within the church community, as a direct result of living the way church leaders told them to live….and only when they started reading the androsphere did they see why they were unable to attract the favorable attention of women in their church. There are men here who do not go to church. Some agnostics, some atheists, etc. There’s no “Dalrock line” to follow so far as I can tell on that score. You might want to bear in mind that not everyone who reads/comments is on the “same page” as you are, theologically. And again, some of the readers/posters here have been divorced by their wives, or come close to it. Something to keep in mind.

To sum up: bear in mind that many of the churchgoing men here have their own personal experience of anguish, frustration, anger, etc. and to belabor the obvious, more than a few can trace those bad times to doing exactly what a church leader taught or told them to do. Feel free to sort out all of that as you see fit.

@DreadPiratKevinThe only thing I can say to you is, don’t be average. Yes, statistically the odds are crap for men when it comes to marriage. Don’t be a statistic. The only marriage that you need worry about is your own, not society at large.
Because women never divorce good men … and women are not friends with divorced women. Google “divorce clusters”.
Oh, and a marriage that stays together … just because neither person got offers from anyone else doesn’t mean anything.
Virtue isn’t virtue … unless you’ve been tested/tempted (and yes, I’ve been propositioned before) 🙂

I was a blue pill church man and spent a long time single, because i did exactly what the church recommended. Supplicate, pedestalise and praise. All bad advice.

I think i can see the perspective that the payoff of seeing children achieve is a great reward. And am sympathetic to it.

Problem i have is that too many men have done all the right things and been divorce raped despite their impeccable husbandly ways. Now they see their children every second weekend while mommy prowls the cougar trail.

Given my lack of vetting ability and late blooming smv that could have been me. And for many of my friends – now tied to child support payments and middle aged poverty – that is their life.

Also like many others, i no longer regularly attend a church. The constant shaming, misandry and gynoworship got to be too much. That both saddens and angers me deeply.

It’s a matter of perspective. As it’s been said, “Anything in life worth having is worth working for.” Life is a gamble, all of life. You could pour yourself into anything and lose it in a moment and all your work could be gone. The key is to stack the odds in your favor the best you can.

Not disagreeing with any of that, but I think you’re missing something – namely the concept that if an activity involves high risks, and the chance of failure is great, the potential rewards need to be pretty damn awesome for that activity to be viable. The best way to stack the odds in your favor is to engage in activities where the odds are good to begin with.

Nothing in life is guaranteed. When you realize that you may be able to view it with a little less pessimism and a bit more optimism.

My frequent use of the word “risk” in my comments so far should tell you that I’m very aware that sometimes things don’t as planned in life. Risk analysis is actually part of what I do for a living, so I understand this better than most. This can make me seem pessimistic perhaps, but I think that’s just because your average person is generally so unaware of risk in comparison.

Just because I’m aware of risks doesn’t mean avoid them at all costs however – that’s completely impractical, because there is risks involved in everything. It does however mean that if an activity involves high risks that can’t be appropriately managed, I may avoid that activity unless the activity holds really significant appeal.

This may be a clinical approach to life, but with only a limited amount of time available to me on this planet, I feel I have to use some systematic approach to try and get the most back from what I put in.

You’re making my point for me. Those are not good marriages. Those are stable marriages, maybe. You really don’t know what it’s like to be happily married. That’s kind of sad, and a sign of the times I suppose. Note I’m not implying it’s your fault either, I think there are probably more truly happily married people out there then you know, we just don’t make a great deal of noise about it, and we certainly don’t get any press.

Sometimes these happy marriages you speak of seem to me like Abominable snowmen. Some people claim they exist, but when ever I go looking they are nowhere to be found.

Ok so maybe good marriages aren’t completely imaginary like the snowman, but for people in my generation, where woman and men both have been raised in the poisonous embrace of Feminism, they do seem to be exceedingly rare. So maybe I don’t know what its like to have a good marriage, just like pretty much everyone else in my generation. And this is part of the problem, because if neither myself or any of the women I’m meant to get married to know what a good marriage looks like (let alone how to HAVE a good marriage), how is it ever going to happen.

I think a major point of contention here is due to the fact that you’re obviously from a different generation than I am, and I think you’re applying standards here that may not be appropriate for my generation.

Does Athol seem like he’s in a sexless marriage? Ian Ironwood? I’m not. 23+ years in and sex is a daily event in our marriage, always has been. We may be the exception to the rule, but at least we prove it’s possible.

Sure it’s possible. Just like it’s possible to survive a skydiving jump when your chute fails, or like it’s possible win millions on the pokies at Vegas. Possible is not the same thing as likely however.

Yes, having a good and happy marriage takes a lot of work. What in life doesn’t that’s worth having? But it’s very much like getting in shape.

No, not really. The cost benefit ratio of getting in shape is nothing like that of getting married. Getting in shape can show noticeable, reproducible results with very little investment, and without the huge exit penalty associated with marriage. My gym won’t take my house and kids away if I skip a few training sessions.

That’s a very misleading. You make it sound like you get in the marriage line and take whatever random woman you are handed. You have complete control over whom you marry, and a far greater amount of influence on her than you think once you are married. That’s kind of the whole point of Athol’s blog, isn’t it?

Not misleading at all. Of course you have a choice of who you marry. Women have been known to change over time though, as well as to mislead men on their trip to the altar. And yes you can influence their behavior to an extent via the use of some intensive and time consuming Athol Kay marital acrobatics. And even Athol himself says this doesn’t work all the time – it’s no silver bullet, plus… who has the time or patience for this sort of thing?

So in the end, you’re still left with the success of your marriage resting at least partially on the shoulders of the little woman. You know, that charming little flower who has been raised in a feminist society that denigrates husbands as servants and walking ATMs, bombards them with divorce porn and then awards them with cash and fabulous prizes when they decide to ditch the chump they married? If that’s not a crapshoot, I don’t know what is.

Thank you Apollo. It’s the mitigation of risk that is important, not the idea of having zero risk to begin with. If you cannot viably reduce a risk and the rewards are rather cumbersome and sometimes darn right harmful to one’s life, it becomes pointless to engage in them.

Society, or perhaps I should say ‘women’, have overvalued a man’s need for marriage. The risk is far too great and the rewards are less than worthwhile.

Put another way, would a man engage in marriage if say the rewards were a great life and the risk for failure was the lopping off of their penis? Would a 50 % or greater chance of losing your penis be ‘worthwhile’?

@FeministHater:
The even worse horror story going around the manosphere is of a guy having a maid … who confided in him that all 4 of her sons died after relations with HIV-infected(not sure whether before or during the marriage) “good girls”.

Have you raised children? Seen them graduate, earn awards, achieve things in their lives? I have. I know. You haven’t, You don’t.. My simple point was that such things make the risks and effort of marriage you describe worthwhile. Since I’ve been there, and you have not, on what basis can you tell me that I am wrong? Only a very young, or very foolish person is so anxious to discount the experiences of those who have done things they themselves have not.

Have you ever read the book Influence by Robert Cialdini? The chapter on the consistency/commitment principle is relevant here, particularly in regards to assessing your judgement of the rewards of marriage. Essentially, the principle says that once someone has committed to a course of action, especially one with high entry costs, they are more likely to over value the rewards they receive from it. One explanation is that this is a way of reducing cognitive dissonance – the sacrifice they made has to be deemed to be “worth it” in their mind.

Now is this true for you? I don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter, because just being aware of the principle makes it impossible for me not to apply a grain of salt here. The point is, to really sell people on the benefits of marriage, we need to have more objective evidence. And yes, I do realize the difficulty this presents to this discussion.

What I fear more, P Ray, is that the answer I would get to the question I proposed above, from most modern day women and even the Church, would be ‘YES’, it is indeed worthwhile to risk a 50 % chance of losing your Crown Jewels on marriage 2.0.

OT. In Uganda, they had a bill drawn up that if you infect your spouse with HIV/AIDs, knowing that you yourself were infected, you can be tried and convicted of a criminal offense and even receive capital punishment. The backlash from the human rights whiners was something else. The usual condemnation over how it will negatively affect women who cannot convince their partners to wear condoms and such and thus infect their partners, was the basic premise. I really get such a good laugh when the UN and other human rights ‘watchdogs’ get their panties in a bunch. It really is a sight to behold! The funny thing is, the feminist statistics, that the femcunts produce, constantly trumpet the idea that women are more easily infected with HIV/AIDs and therefore a bill that purports to convict those who don’t inform their partner of their HIV/AIDs status would potentially decrease the number of women being infected with the virus. Stands to reason, right? If more women than men are infected via unprotected sex, making both partners inform each other of their HIV status would allow most women to not sexitup with the HIV positive male and therefore not get infected. Wow! If the femcunt stats were true and honest, this would most definitely be a net positive for Ugandan women. I’m sure the irony is not lost on them.

Anyway, not a Ugandan myself, not close to it; but I do so enjoy African politics. Haha!

We always hear of this Lifetime Channel stuff, where HE is the one to bring the roses, mow the lawn, make the money, take HER out to dindin – while she watches GIRLS and microwaves Spaghetti-O’s for dinner…WHY OH WHY?

Good point. Thats the gap our Femitard society has between what is expected of a husband, and what is expected of a wife. A husband is EXPECTED to mow the lawn, take out the trash, clean the garage, chase the spiders, clean the gutters, take the wife out to dinner, and more. And what does our society at large expect from a wife? Who knows, it’s never come up.

Remember guys, your brand spanking new bride comes straight from the factory with a preinstalled sense of entitlement that you either need to manage or painstakingly deprogram. This is the same woman by the way, who (theoretically) carries half the responsibility for the success of your marriage on her shoulders.

Thank you Apollo. It’s the mitigation of risk that is important, not the idea of having zero risk to begin with. If you cannot viably reduce a risk and the rewards are rather cumbersome and sometimes darn right harmful to one’s life, it becomes pointless to engage in them.

Uh huh. I’ve made that risk argument a lot when it comes to marriage, but Im now getting the impression that it’s not convincing anyone other than those already predisposed to think that way. I had a feeling a guy who thinks in terms of economic might appreciate it though…

Good point. Thats the gap our Femitard society has between what is expected of a husband, and what is expected of a wife. A husband is EXPECTED to mow the lawn, take out the trash, clean the garage, chase the spiders, clean the gutters, take the wife out to dinner, and more. And what does our society at large expect from a wife? Who knows, it’s never come up.

The reason it’s not come up (nor is likely to do so) is the belief systems of many posters here.

It’s that old adage “there’s NO accounting for taste.”

If the Noble Knights here want to convince themselves they’re satisfied to put on a Smiley Face and grind away on a 40-year-old with stretchmarks, bingo wings, cookingphobia and a Secret Plan for a quickie divorce settlement, fine.

It’s their incredible (and suspiciously sanctimonious) insistence that their incarceration is better than grinding away on a succession of hot 24-year-olds because theirs has “love.” WTF is “love” anyway?

Love and Marriage MAY have been fine for the Greatest Generation where SHE stayed home, darned the socks, changed the kids, raised the kids, cooked ALL the meals, gave blowjobs without (much) complaint, nursed the ill – AND stayed faithful. OK, I can see why gramps still wanted to get frisky with granny after 40 years.

But with today’s women? Who the Hell are these noble knights trying to bs – and WHY?

It may seem like a small thing to see your son awarded his Eagle Scout rank compared to all the risks and pitfalls of marriage 2.0, but until you experience it, you just can’t know the feelings of pride, accomplishment, and satisfaction this brings to your life.

I don’t denigrate your son’s achievement; I’m actually happy – America needs more boys like that. Just beware: That is the type that winds up enlisting and fighting for the likes of Bushes and Obamas. Likewise, it may seem like a small thing to see your 21-year-old girlfriend awarded her college diploma compared to all the risks and pitfalls of girlfriend 2.0, but until you experience it, you just can’t know the feelings of pride, accomplishment, and sexual satisfaction this brings to your life during the celebration later that night.

The refutation was me.

Lil’ bit.., but ’twas more of a Justification…

But no, if you have no kids, you are not in a position to lecture me on what I can or cannot know about my kids,

Just as YOU then, by hoisting yourself on the petard of YOUR own words, cannot lecture on NON-Marriage.

suzz
I have to agree with Dreadpiratkevin –
“Only a very young, or very foolish person is so anxious to discount the experiences of those who have done things they themselves have not.”

ENOUGH of these Gang Tackle argumentum ad youthium approaches. I’m probably older than the both of you. So, your presumptions carry no weight in the actual argument and appear desperate.

I temper my foul temper to engage in an adult discussion. Remind me to NEVER take seriously your self-stated Pharisaical piety in regards to Christian “statements” you make on this blog – or any others. Don’t EVER post on my blog. Beware.

The bulk of your contribution here has been to tangle with other commenters. Why are you here on my blog lecturing my readers not to comment on yours? The solution seems obvious.

OK Firepower, we get it. You’re a playa, out there slaying pu**y left and right. And you know, if that’s the life you want to live, great. I’m all for it. By all means, slay all the pu**y you can.

You also raise lots of good points. Yes, there are a lot of chumps out there, investing in and marrying unworthy women. Yes, most women aren’t worthy of marriage. Yes, marriage in its current state is a bad deal for men. No, I wouldn’t recommend marriage 2.0 to any man unless he wants children, and even then it’s touch and go. Yes, society is going to hell in a handbasket, and the ride gets faster and bleaker every damn day.

We’re also here talking about not only the future of sex, but our culture and our faith. Some women are marriageworthy. Some of them comment here (Suz, grerp, Sunshine, I’m looking at you.) A few women not worthy of marriage can be made marriageworthy with a lot of self examination and work. The trick is to find those women, and to help good men who want marriage find them.

One task is to prevent marriageworthy women from ruining their marriageworthiness. Another is to hold up a mirror to the North American church to show them for the hypocrites and teachers of false doctrines they are. A third is to report accurately to the masses on the current SMP and the Church’s complicity in the damage and destruction to the culture and the SMP.

That’s really what we’re doing here. Wanna help? If so, great. If not, why do you hang out here, other than to walk by this cage and poke us with sticks?

Stuff like this is why I have much respect and love for the manosphere’s players: Roissy, Roosh, FlyFreshandYoung, Mentu, Ashur, Privateman, GMac, Virgle Kent, et al. Yeah, they’re about slaying the pu**y. But they don’t poke sticks in my eyes, telling me all about how I f**ked up. They don’t waste time with meaningless debates with married manosphere bloggers and commenters, trying to convince us of the correctness of their positions and how everyone else is f**ked up. And they recognize what they’re doing isn’t good for the society they used to know. They know their lifestyle is only a rational response to the decay, cultural mayhem and societal destruction they have the misfortune to live in. Most of all, they’re honest and straight up to themselves and the world on what they’re all about: Hedonism, making money, getting laid, and enjoying life.

FP wrote: “IIf the Noble Knights here want to convince themselves they’re satisfied to put on a Smiley Face and grind away on a 40-year-old with stretchmarks, ”

WARNING – my response contains mature themes.

You know what bugs me about this comment? That a woman aging, or a man still finding sexual satisfaction with his aging wife, is someone how a problem. The morally challenged people are the sluts, the single-by-choice moms, the women who toss their husbands out without Biblical grounds. The sin here is not that a woman might have stretch marks. She is responsible for her appearance of course. That’s why I run mile and after mile on the treadmill every day and don’t eat ice cream – so that I won’t turn into a fat cow. That’s why I spend so much time on maintaining long hair when short would be so much easier. That’s why I put on a skirt every morning instead of sweat pants. But stretch marks? Yeah, I got ’em. That’ll happen after having a bunch o’ babies. So what? That’s why the crotchless teddy was invented; stretch marks are covered, interesting bits are available. Why should a man prefer a 40 year old wife over a hot 24 year old slut? Well, I don’t have a sexually transmitted disease for one. Second of all, if I get knocked up after he f*cks me, who cares? Third, our union is a holy covenant. My husband doesn’t have to put a Smiley Face and convince himself of anything.

What I get for coming late to the party on this post is so much that I really can’t address directly. Besides most of what I think on the issue at hand is already on my blog (link on my nick) so one can read there if they want a lot of detail. That said, in no particular order:

@DreadPirateKevin
As a single man, most of what I’m seeing are things I’ve observed along with the things I’ve read. There’s a risk evaluation on any activity and more and more are actually looking at those risks in comparison to the rewards. That said, we’ve heard plenty from people like you that claim to be proponents of marriage. As you wrote, “we don’t understand the rewards of a traditional marriage. All we see is risks and failures”. We see all these things, but the risks and failures so outweigh any rewards that it’s fruitless.

And many of us who are trying to follow Christ the best we can see Marriage 2.0 for the abomination in God’s sight that it is. Since there is no such thing as “traditional marriage”, even among Christians (and I went around with DarwinCatholic in the past on this blog over that), as long as she has the friends, Churchianity at large, and the government behind her pushing Marriage 2.0, it doesn’t matter how you choose to define the marriage or how she defines the marriage. Those rules will take into hold if she decides to push them, or her friends and Churchianity wear her down enough to take the temptation to move. As others described it, including Dalrock, that’s always a threat on any marriage.

What you fail to realize is that anything you say is subjective. As is anyone’s experiences. We build our experiences and decisions based on the risk of the things we see. As I noted over on the blog, we’re watching marriages around us. We get several of those examples starting with our own parents. Your marriage is an example to others around you even. “Married With Children” gained the traction that it did simply because it is closer to reality than a show like “Leave It To Beaver”.

You write “seeing my sons grow into strong successful men .. means everything”, but we see examples to the contrary. You are very fortunate that you got this chance with Marriage 2.0 being prevalent, and by the rules of Marriage 2.0, them being her children and her allowing you to do that. A lot of men don’t get to see their children grow up. They get visitation if they’re lucky, but they always get the pleasure of wage slavery at the end of government’s gun. We see these examples and know them. These fill in and complete the picture. We see and understand the rewards of what marriage is supposed to be already, but you would desire us to run in headlong without seeing the risks, too.

That said, it seems for your experience you relay in your posts on this thread, you really don’t seem to be seeking understanding of others in their decisions. As you wrote, “You really don’t know what it’s like to be happily married.”, but I’ve found that most married people really don’t know what it’s like to be single in the current marriage market, either. You might say that’s what you once were, but you were in a different time, and as I’ve found with most other marrieds I’ve met, you’ve gotten a good case of amnesia over it or never had the experience in the first place if you married right out of school.

Then you have this tone of judgment because people aren’t going along with your way (nothing I haven’t seen before). In the end with a blog like this or others, you are just another voice who has made a decision, just like I’m another voice who has made a decision. As a friendly suggestion, you would do well to respect the opinions of others. You will find that people will be more apt to listen to yours and maybe even change their minds now and again.

MGTOW guys think they are getting the most out of life, but the’re really getting the least. You don’t win on defense.

As one who actually is such a thing (at least in a soft way), at least in terms of my own life choice, I’ve hung around places where they frequent (clue: this isn’t one). This said, it’s not playing defense. Playing defense is running headlong into a marriage, hoping that you’re one of the lucky ones that doesn’t have a feral wife, hoping that she doesn’t frivolously divorce you because she got unhaaaaapy, hoping she doesn’t take away your home, your things, and your livelihood on a whim, hoping she doesn’t go farther than that and file a false domestic violence claim, hoping she doesn’t rob you of the chance to either see or raise your children, hoping she doesn’t turn your children against you through false witness….well it goes on and on… and running enough game or doing enough supplicating to her or appearing Churchian enough for her that she still thinks she’s pleased in the marriage that she’s in.

Now playing on offense involves looking at what’s going on, gathering all the evidence, (for Christians) prayerfully looking all those things, then applying wisdom and discernment to make a choice. This is what MGTOWers are doing. “Going Their Own Way” in essence not listening to society, which says that marriage is what you do to become an adult, marriage is good for all people and all times, and having a 75-90% chance of joining the lemmings going off the cliff. All this would be clear to you if you were to research, learn, and seek to understand what is going on.

that makes the odds 75% against a marriage being a good choice. That’s a very misleading. You make it sound like you get in the marriage line and take whatever random woman you are handed.

Along with this. To use the quoted number, it’s not in relation to a “random woman you are handed”. You can and do make a choice. The problem is, as Firepower said of children above, you just don’t know how things will turn out. You could try to look at the woman and discern her heart, but deception is a real easy game when it comes to marriage prospects. Only God knows the hearts of women, but ultimately it’s up to us to find out. What is being said is that there is a 75% chance that the marriage will either end up in divorce or be one where it would be better to be single than to be married. This is the talk about risk assessment that Feminist Hater and Apollo write about. Any marriage comes with risks, but part of that decision to marry or not marry is to evaluate those risks versus the rewards. That said:

Feminist Hater wrote:

There’s proper risk assessment with which one approaches a business investment and then there is the callous approach, where one just throws caution to the wind and goes blindly ahead without thought of consequence. Marriage has become the latter.

Essentially, the principle says that once someone has committed to a course of action, especially one with high entry costs, they are more likely to over value the rewards they receive from it.

I think this is true. It seems the burden for those that are trying to successfully sell marriage is to objectively prove that the rewards are higher than the entry costs as well as the risks involved. To say that at this point they are failing is an understatement. As I explain over on the blog, part of the reason is that they’re going about it all wrong. Right now, the risk is what is keeping people away, especially since there is no way the rewards can even approach the level of risk. But the current strategy of shaming men into it just isn’t working. As insanity goes, they double down expecting the result to be different.

I’ve made that risk argument a lot when it comes to marriage, but Im now getting the impression that it’s not convincing anyone other than those already predisposed to think that way. I had a feeling a guy who thinks in terms of economic might appreciate it though…

It’s hard to relate something to someone that doesn’t understand the place you are in and empathize with it. Then as the quote above, a lot are more offended than anything because they take it as something they have to defend since they are married and feel the need to defend their choice, rather than listening and seeking understanding.

That said, the usual analogy that seems to be adopted in most spheres is the hand-grenade analogy. Basically it says if you were presented with a box of hand-grenades, you knew that there was a 75% chance of one going off if you pulled the pin, and knew there was no way to tell which ones would go off, would you take one and pull the pin? Most may not relate, but with a lot of men, that’s really the point that marriage has gotten to these days.

First of all, I’ve started reading your blog and it’s really well-done. I recommend it to others

I don’t want to come across as trying to defend my choice to marry and to sucker others into a hellish situation. I really want to understand. The thing is, sometimes I think only one side of the anti-marriage argument gets presented, the negative side. Yet I keep seeing research studies that show that married men are healthier, generally happier, and have sex more often (yeah, guys, I know it’s hard to believe, but it kind of makes sense since you have a potential sex partner sleeping next to you every night and even if she is getting a little fat, well, beauty IS only a light switch away, right?). Of course, there are issues of research methodology that could be swaying the results, but the results do seem to be consistent over time.

And to look at all the player blogs (I won’t mention them by name but we all know which ones I’m talking about) and believe that everything they write, every detail, is literally true requires suspending one’s belief to quite a degree. By the way, I’m not criticizing them in any way. Although I think they make up some of their stories, they often point out truths about our culture, sometimes ones I’d rather not notice. They’re useful, but I think they’re like the Penthouse Forums of the manosphere. Entertaining stories, some good points, but to be taken more as allegory than anything else.

Anyway, I have a question for the married men. On balance, would you say that the benefits have outweighed the risks for you personally with respect to marriage? Have the rewards been worth the hassle? A truthful answer please, not just a knee-jerk women-are-such-a- pain-in-the-@ss-avoid-them-like-the-plague response.

Sunshine, prove that marriage makes men healthier, wealthier, happier and get more sex rather than those things allowing those men to have better marriages. In other words, causality. Prove that marriage is the actual cause of these things and not just an effect of them. Point out why a man should risk EVERYTHING on marriage when there’s a 50 % chance of divorce and divorce very often to not equals slavery.

Please provide some objective evidence of why a wife is even worth the hassle. The ball is in your court, not ours. What you wrote above is entirely based on shame.

Here’s a little game you can play with yourself to allow you to maybe understand a little bit. Take a gun and a coin. Toss that coin. Heads, you shoot yourself. Tails, you survive a bit longer but have to toss that coin again come the next shit-test. Welcome to the game of marriage to a modern woman. Wanna play!?

Being a woman on any of the blogs among the Manosphere I feel as if I am at a disadvantage to say anything that may be deemed credible simply because of my gender. I didn’t choose my gender but I did choose to go a different way than what society tells me I should. I realize I am the exception, but I know that I am not the only exception.

I understand the realities of modern society and how men are unfairly treated, it is why I am here and why I take my chances of being chewed up verbally if my thinking doesn’t line up with someone else’s. I have to shore up my emotions as a female, putting on an extra layer of covering because I do realize the bitterness caused by the hurt endured, but I try to keep an open mind when I read the blogs weighing out the experiences of the writers with what I observe around me. We each have a story, we each have experiences we have found joy in and those that have cut us to the core. Until we walk in the shoes of another we cannot judge, we can each only share what we know and let the observer compile the information they gather and make their own choices. They may be one of the lucky ones on the first roll, they may decide not to roll at all and stay away from the tables or they may be one who rolls the dice repeatedly until their lucky number comes up. My dad was one of the latter.

As a child I watched my mother rake him across the coals. She was one of the very first generation feminists who used the court system and manipulated men to no end. She was the epitome of the single mom before being a single mom was considered popular and she used it to her advantage in every way. My dad didn’t walk away from the table though. He rolled again, married a wonderful lady that I consider more of a mom than anyone in my life to this day. They realized early on that they didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of issues and divorced amicably and remained friends. My dad’s third wife and he were together for about a decade before they married, then they were married sixteen years before he died a couple of weeks ago. The last several years he suffered from Alzheimer’s and she stood with him through the worst of days and the best. She was with him through his heart attack and all that followed. She was the one who found him after he collapsed on the floor. She alone will now handle all the debts and financial tangles that are left.

My dad never got bitter from his experiences. He didn’t cast a negative attitude toward an entire classification of people because some individuals treated him worse than a dog. He took each person as they were and judged as such. I share this because his is just another story, good or bad depending on how you look at it. You can rip out portions of it to make the case for defending your own particular viewpoint or just take it for what it is, someone’s choices in life. Someone who took what life handed him and dealt with it, getting stronger with each challenge. He respected people and their viewpoints while arguing his. Yes he was perhaps several generations before some of the readers on this blog, but he was a man, not just a male. And he taught me what real men are. I married a man just like my dad. I’m thankful I realize that now, and I step back in my place because he is who he is and I need not interfere.

Attacking one another is not going to be the way to change things and make a point. Attacking people or individuals is not going to be the way either. Argue the subject. Attack the institutions and governments. Make a statement. If feminism got its start as an acorn that grew pretty damn quick, then we should be able to grow this acorn as well. I hate what my mother did to my dad. I hate what I see other women do to men. I hate that I feel ashamed sometimes for being a female because of the actions of a majority of the females. Some days I feel like I have to duck from both sides. I do what I can, I speak out, I try not to judge one person better than the other or their choices. I want a better place for my children and grandchildren to live. In the day to day I can only do what is best for my life, while trying to make things around me better. In the end, don’t most people on the Manosphere desire the same common goal? Isn’t that why we all come here to blog in the first place?

“In other words, causality. Prove that marriage is the actual cause of these things and not just an effect of them. ”

Yeah, I think that is really hard to do in sociological research; causation is often extrapolated from a sufficient number of correlations. However, I think that when subject pools are selected, they do try to select people who have only one variable (the one they want to study) that separates them into one of the two groups (control and experimental). But I think your point is worth considering. Still, we do this all the time with correlation/causation. For example, I can’t exactly prove that my husband makes as much money as he does because he first got a university degree. It might be that he got a university degree because he had the characteristics that would have made him earn a decent amount of money anyway. But I’d still feel comfortable saying that university degrees generally lead to higher income for men.

“Please provide some objective evidence of why a wife is even worth the hassle. The ball is in your court, not ours. What you wrote above is entirely based on shame.”

Gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound shaming. It certainly wasn’t my intention to do so. I just want to consider things as fully as I can from all perspectives, and I advise others to do the same. But I wouldn’t try to shame any man into considering marriage.

SunshineMary, to answer your question: yes, I think getting married was a good move for me. But I married in Australia in 1986.

Some married men do very well. I feel that I was lucky in my wife. She has been fairly generous sexually, and what I get from her is only limited by my personal morality. She is fairly high-maintenance, but not impossibly. I don’t like doing housework, and she has always done my laundry, and cooked. She still does, altho’ I now cook a bit, being semi-retired. She is not the warmest of mothers, but she is diligent.

She is strongly bonded to me, because when I got to her, she was still a virgin, and I was “alpha” with her, at least initially. I was very arrogant in those days, and I have never been squeamish about being firm with a woman.

An alternative to turning the light off for sex is to turn the lights low. That is flattering for a woman. The thing I mostly do is get her to take everything off except her blouse. I like that anyway; she looks cute like that; and it is eminently practical.

@ Jacquie “Make a statement. If feminism got its start as an acorn that grew pretty damn quick, then we should be able to grow this acorn as well. I hate what my mother did to my dad. I hate what I see other women do to men. I hate that I feel ashamed sometimes for being a female because of the actions of a majority of the females. Some days I feel like I have to duck from both sides. I do what I can, I speak out, I try not to judge one person better than the other or their choices. I want a better place for my children and grandchildren to live. In the day to day I can only do what is best for my life, while trying to make things around me better.”

I feel the same as you. When I see things like that video from the Glass Slipper event (check out Full of Grace Seasoned with Salt if you haven’t seen it yet), I cringe with embarrassment for the entire female population. I also try to do what I can, which includes reading up on blogs like this one. I try to be humble and admit that I don’t know everything; I like to hear other people’s perspectives, and I try to accept correction gracefully when someone points out flaws in my thinking. What else can women who actually care about the future of our society do but try to “influence the herd” as greyghost puts it.

Well Sunshine, I’m glad you think my point was at least ‘worth’ considering. The reason I comment on this blog is because I am actually interested in marriage. At least version 1.0. Not interested in being cajoled into it though, not for some shaky ideal that it will make me happier, healthier or whatever. I don’t need some ‘load’ to make me steer straighter either; thanks Bill but no thanks. I certainly don’t need femcunt studies providing some arbitrary proof of how marriage benefits men. If it was clearly the truth, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, men would be getting married and divorce rates would be low.

,…(yeah, guys, I know it’s hard to believe, but it kind of makes sense since you have a potential sex partner sleeping next to you every night and even if she is getting a little fat, well, beauty IS only a light switch away, right?). Of course, there are issues of research methodology that could be swaying the results, but the results do seem to be consistent over time.

I don’t know what to call that line of reasoning. Especially considering the current dilemma of far more sex outside of marriage than in it. Unless you’re talking about Christian men who take their Christianity seriously. In which case, show me the Christian woman or women, young, pretty and virgins who are willing to marry and stay married, i.e. not ever, in a million years use the divorce courts, barring the usual exceptions of abuse or neglect. Show me this or don’t bother. Show me the Church that takes these matter seriously and takes women to task for their frivolous divorces. For you see, the risk is far too great without that backing, especially for a good, Christian man who was raised bill blue.

The language being used is the shaming type. Jacquie just used her father’s example to shame us all. Her father put up with two divorces from two terrible woman, but never once did he complain, never once did he give up or shout or get angry, he just tossed his dice again. Good little beta man there. So… be more like her dad and risk again and again and don’t complain, you stupid men, just toss your silly dice again and marry us. Grrrrr!

Jacquie’s last paragraph also used a certain amount of the shaming once again.

“Attack the governments and institutions, don’t attack the women who use them though you mean men!” she says.

What is that? Other than shaming? Is it a plea to hear the other side of the story, perhaps… Why is it then shrouded in ‘don’t generalise’ and ‘don’t blame us’ and so forth?

I’m tired of the nonsense ladies. I understand your frustration, I really do, but what on Earth do you call the above statements? Are you really trying to understand us or are you trying to get us to marry? Please explain.

“Unless you’re talking about Christian men who take their Christianity seriously. In which case, show me the Christian woman or women, young, pretty and virgins who are willing to marry and stay married, i.e. not ever, in a million years use the divorce courts, barring the usual exceptions of abuse or neglect. Show me this or don’t bother. Show me the Church that takes these matter seriously and takes women to task for their frivolous divorces. ”

Yes, my remarks are generally to be understood as being geared exclusively toward Christians. I should add that as a post-script to every comment I make,maybe

Now personally I only support divorce in the case of repeated, unrepentant adultery or outright abandonment. I do not support divorce in cases of abuse, even physical abuse (separating but not divorcing would be the correct Biblical response) However, my personal beliefs do not change the laws. The laws suck and are totally unfair. I am here to garner the weapons I need to do my small part to fight against the moral decay and complicity in the destruction of marriage by the whim of women within the church.

“I certainly don’t need femcunt studies providing some arbitrary proof of how marriage benefits men. If it was clearly the truth, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, men would be getting married and divorce rates would be low. ”

Yes, that is so. Research is conducted at universities, which are notoriously feminist and marxist in orientation. No matter how hard the researchers attempt to be objective, surely that bias exists. And I agree with you that men would be marrying at higher rates if it were advantageous for them to do so.

“Attack the governments and institutions, don’t attack the women who use them though you mean men!” she says.

INCOMING — ok, I’m ducking again.

It’s sad that you need to put words in my mouth that I never even thought to make a point. I was trying to make a point regarding the exchange that was taking place between married men and single men on this site…if you understood this to be about a battle between men and women then you need to go back and reread my comment. There was no shaming intended. I was just trying to point out that we all come here seeking the same thing and if we are only going to argue one another then how can we pursue what we all commonly want anyway. I often wonder after reading some of your comments if your handle should actually read ‘Female Hater’ since that is what you often show. I did not have a choice of the gender in which I was born, I cannot apologize for something in which I had no control. I do however have to answer for my actions and attitude and therefore I am proactive in how I handle myself. I can only try. I will make mistakes. But I will not be misrepresented by someone who is narrow in his thinking.
I understand where you are coming from. I understand why you feel the way you feel. My argument is not with you, never was. I don’t know why you felt the need to get personal or to misrepresent me.

@Feminist Hater
Did I misunderstand what you wrote? Did I take something you said out of context? If I did then please point it out to me and I will humbly recognize my mistake and make my apologies. I do not understand why you misunderstood my original comment. I would like to however.

@ Jacquie: “Attacking people or individuals is not going to be the way either. Argue the subject. Attack the institutions and governments.”

@: Feminist Hater: “Jacquie’s last paragraph also used a certain amount of the shaming once again.
“Attack the governments and institutions, don’t attack the women who use them though you mean men!” she says.

Jacquie, I know you to be thoroughly anti-feminist, and I’ve learned a lot from reading your comments. In this one small case, however, I can kind of see how FH reached the conclusion that he did about just those couple of sentences. Of course we don’t want to exactly attack people, but I do think we are going to have to call out the women in a pretty straight-forward way here via slut-shaming or whatever. And women are the “beneficiaries” of most of the government entitlement programs, so I kind of see his point. What do you think?

Perhaps my wording was not correct. I was trying to make the point that we need to change things in the legal system(gov’t) and in the education system and churches(institutions). I am not trying to shame anyone here. If that is the way it came across for that I am truly sorry. Now going back and reading it side by side this way it could be misunderstood. I do now see how Feminist Hater could have taken it.
@Feminist Hater-I apologize for the comment about female hater. It was personal and should not have been said. In going back and rereading I am ashamed that I allowed my temper to let me get personal. Just the thing that I said we should not do. I am guilty. We are striving for the same goal no matte what choices we make for our personal lives.

I don’t want to come across as trying to defend my choice to marry and to sucker others into a hellish situation. I really want to understand. The thing is, sometimes I think only one side of the anti-marriage argument gets presented, the negative side. Yet I keep seeing research studies that show that married men are healthier, generally happier, and have sex more often…

I don’t have time to really do this justice, but I’ll take a quick shot at it. I share your view in wanting marriage for both men and women. This is why I write on the topics I write about. Marriage is too essential to turn our backs on, even though it has suffered great violence from the culture, the state, and a treacherous church.

The analogy I’ll offer isn’t perfect but hopefully gets the basic idea across. Those of us who are happily married are sitting in a fine restaurant, enjoying our meals. Outside are a crowd of would be patrons, but the restaurant is full and they won’t be seated. However, the crowd outside decides to make the best of it. They set up a grill and hold an impromptu cookout. Some number of them comment that they wouldn’t trade sitting in our boring stuffy restaurant for the experience of cooking and eating in the outdoors with the company of the rest of the crowd. While I think the restaurant is better, I’m not going to call out to them, to try to convince them that they really should regret that they didn’t get a table. Instead I’m going to focus what influence I have on making that option available to more diners. I’ll try to get the restaurant down the street to start following the health codes so they don’t poison people. But to do that first I have to take on the corrupt health inspector (the church), etc. Besides, who am I to tell the people making the best of the cookout that they don’t really enjoy being there more than they would enjoy being in the restaurant? Not all of us have the same tastes. Given the lack of options, I truly hope that the cookout is what makes them happy. If someone wants to know how they can get a table I’ll offer the best advice I have on finding one, including advice on avoiding restaurants like the one down the street.

You know what bugs me about this comment? That a woman aging, or a man still finding sexual satisfaction with his aging wife, is someone how a problem. The morally challenged people are the sluts, the single-by-choice moms, the women who toss their husbands out without Biblical grounds. The sin here is not that a woman might have stretch marks. She is responsible for her appearance of course.

@Jacquie: “I just have to remember to keep my emotions in check and stick to the facts.”

Well, we are women, so that is not natural for us! 🙂 Until lately, I thought my emotions WERE the facts. lol So I understand your feelings completely. There’s a lot to learn on blogs like this one, but one of the “hazards” is that almost everyone else is male and they are arguing from a more rational/logical framework, whereas we are more driven by an emotional/personal narrative framework.

Dalrock, thank you. Word pictures are always helpful to me. I will think about what you’ve written for awhile today while I’m going about my housework. 🙂 Is it normal to have daily gestalt shifts when one first swallows the red pill?

One little thing I’d like to add to your word picture. As we’re sitting here enjoying our nice meal and looking out the plate glass window, it is hard not to notice that although many of the revelers appear to be having a riotous time, there do seem to be a rather disconcerting number of grease fires everywhere. How long before their careless cooking burns down the establishment we are sitting in?

@Dalrock
I do feel badly if my comment at 7:37 may seem like shaming. If you feel that it is, I ask that you please remove it. Also the shamefull comment I made to Feminist Hater at 8:52; I would not want someone else reading this blog to get the wrong impression of him based on what I wrote so if you feel it best to remove that, please do. If they are best left up, then I will wear my shame and take what will come. Thank you.

Shaming from women in the west is so prevalent. ALL of you do it. ALL the time. Without realizing it. Its a subconscious shit test that you don’t know when your doing it, you don’t know when you’ve done it, and when its pointed out to you because you don’t FEEL you meant it that way it shouldn’t be taken that way. Yes Jacquie that comment was shaming. Calling feminist hater a Female hater is also shaming. This is the problem, even women who get it still revert to that same shaming trope trotted out when you cant get your way and your ideas or feelings are being challenged. What hope do regular betas have if women who understand feminist brainwashing and try to fight against it STILL have this subconscious reaction to any challenge of their feelings. Please tell me. You say you’ve come a long way from what you used to be. I say you still have a long way to go.

1. A lot of what you read here and elsewhere in the manosphere is justified venting, outrage and frustration over the current state of marriage and relationships in the US, and the dire shortage of marriageable women. A lot of people have seen this coming for a long time; it’s here, and it’s not improving. If anything, it’s worsening. There are many, many causes for this which I won’t go into here. But the effects are devastating:

a. Legions of young men with no societally sanctioned sexual outlet. They can’t even get a date, much less get a woman to marry them. They are at the nadir of their sexual market values, and they live in a romantic and sexual desert. I remember those days clearly. They were EXQUISITELY painful. I cannot even tell you just how painful they were, and I don’t think women can come close to relating to the level of pain that kind of rejection and deprivation inflicts on a man.

And I can tell you this — If this society doesn’t get a handle on it, we will be looking at collapse on a scale we’ve never seen before. For now the lid is on it, through anesthetizing such men with online porn and video games, and minimum wage cubicle jobs that pay them just enough to cover the rent and their hobbies. That die may already have been cast. I fear we’re headed to complete collapse and nothing we can do will stop it, frankly. I think we’re headed there because these legions of men have nothing to invest in, no reason to improve, and literally nothing to live for other than getting drunk, fapping, and reaching the next level on Call of Duty 4. That scares the hell out of people like Feminist Hater — and me.

b. Slutty, vapid, self-absorbed women who live for their Louis Vuitton handbags and truly don’t get how f**king 20 or more douchebags is detrimental. (One wonders how if they truly don’t get that, then why do they lie about it? Why not advertise it and wear it like a badge of honor?) These women are literally destroying their MMV with every hookup and they act as though they don’t give a shit. Moreover, they are thoroughly masculinized, adopting the worst behaviors of men. Then these entitled bitches stand around wailing and whining about “where are all the good men” and truly blinkered about why some beta provider won’t offer a ring and a date on bended knee.

2. By necessity, marriage has become increasingly a risk-benefit analysis and a task in risk management. Yes, marriage has great rewards for men: a helpmate, regular sex, propulsion of your genes and heritage into the future, a sense of accomplishment, a sense of belonging in your community and your society. But those rewards require great investment and commitment from men. They require enormous outlays of work, time, sweat, and money from men. And those rewards were most likely to be extended when society protected men’s investment and commitment.

Our society no longer protects men’s investment and commitment in his marriage. Once he marries, he is not protected, but rather EXPOSED to great risk. His society no longer gives him any assurances or protections.

Yes, his risk might pay off. Yes, he might reap great rewards from marriage. But what if he is wrong? What if she simply decides she does not want him or love him anymore? What if something goes wrong? A reversal of fortune, a job loss, a devastating injury, a medical problem, another more alpha man she finds more attractive whom she decides to cheat with in a moment of female weakness?

And even if he is not wrong, he must work and work to be alpha enough for his wife. He must prevent her from getting unhaaaappy. If he cannot do that, and she stays with him, she will be miserable. She will make him and their children miserable.

The stakes are incredibly high. This is the single greatest risk he can ever take. If he makes the wrong call on this, he will lose everything he spent years working for. He will lose most of his money. He will lose his home. He will lose his children. And there will be nothing he can do to stop it, control it, or mitigate the damage.

Everything he has, everything he owns, everything he spent a lifetime working for and earning, the futures of his children, all of it — is riding on a woman’s haaaaappiness, tingles, and feelings of security.

And so, more and more men are looking carefully at it and saying — ” No. That deal isn’t attractive to me. The risk is too great. The possible rewards are simply not worth that level of risk.”

“Anyway, I have a question for the married men. On balance, would you say that the benefits have outweighed the risks for you personally with respect to marriage? Have the rewards been worth the hassle? A truthful answer please, not just a knee-jerk women-are-such-a- pain-in-the-@ss-avoid-them-like-the-plague response.”

The answers will depend on the men answering and their experiences.

For me: The benefits have outweighed the risks personally and the rewards worth the hassle, but not by much. My wife and I recently have been through a hard, long slog that has tested our marriage hard (not adultery – had that been the case she would simply have been autodumped. Adultery gets the automatic kick-to-the-curb.) I had to make some very, very hard choices and in the end it came down to reasoning back to biblical principles and making hard risk benefit analyses based on our personal situation. Our marriage won’t be the same after this.

I can tell you this: If I had it to do over again, I probably wouldn’t. If I ever find myself single again, I’ll never marry again. I won’t recommend marriage to any man unless he wants children, and even then, I would advise him to consider strongly whether he really wants children.

As someone said: You are not only marrying a certain woman, you are also marrying a certain culture/society. If the culture/society is sound, you can marry any woman. If the culture/society is unsound, you have to gamble on a counter culture/society woman remaining so. The odds are really bad in an unsound culture/society.

Deti, how can you cay the benefits outweigh the risks given your final paragraph?

Simple risk benefit analysis again. Decisions on whether to marry or not, or whether to remain married or not, are not made in a vacuum. They are based on guiding first principles, known facts, current situation and surrounding circumstances, history looking backward, and projections going forward. You take all of that, consider it, pray even, and then reach a decision. Overall, the benefits of remaining married outweigh the risks given my personal situation.

And the risks are not just those to me, either. I have to consider the risks to my children, for whom I am responsible — not just to feed and clothe them; but to educate them, instruct them, and prepare them for lives in a world I understand far better than does their mother. In many ways my children are at far greater risk than I. It is my responsibility to reduce and manage those risks to them as best I can. I can do that much better living with them than I can not living with them.

Dalrock, although your analogy is interesting, it is incomplete. You need to include the whole picture. And that is, some number of couples in the restaurant suddenly leave; the woman stands up, shrieks to the management that her escort is simply beastly, and a couple of pug-ugly bouncers come, rough him up, take his wallet, beat the snot out of him, and throw him out the back door into the alley. She stays for a while, paying for the meal out of his wallet, and then slowly walks out the front door, to cruise around the barbeque grills for a while.. And everyone pretends nothing just happened, although some murmur of “what did HE do?” floats ’round the room. For some odd reason, there are more and more empty tables in this restaurant. Fewer customers are coming in the front door. Business is down. The restaurant manager worries out loud that his business isn’t going well. But his bouncers continue to beat, rob, and eject men any time a woman demands it.

Those men at the barbeque grills? More than a few of them used to eat in the restaurant. But after getting beaten up, robbed, beaten up some more and thrown away in to the alley, they don’t much care for restaurant food any more. They regard it as too expensive, one way or another.

There is another group circulating around the barbeque grills, and out into the street. These are women who alternate between snacking at the barbeque grills, and importuning men to take them into the restaurant. They insist they only want good restaurant food, as they wipe the grease from barbeque off of their fingers.Some of these women used to eat in the restaurant, but decided to have their escorts beaten and robbed. For some reason they find it a bit more difficult to get an escort back into the restaurant than previously was the case.

There’s also a shadowy crowd out beyond the barbeque grills that most diners in the restaurant can’t see. This crowd is almost entirely men. Many of them are young, but some are middle aged or even old. No way they get into the restaurant. Although some of them used to eat there, before they got beaten up, robbed, and thrown into the alley. And nobody wants them too close to the barbeque grills, either. The women who eat at the grills and want into the restaurant scorn them. These men exist in the shadows, chewing on a dried out piece of jerky.

Every once in a while, some fat guy from the restaurant management strolls outside, and hollers at all the men in the street:

“HEY ! Why don’t you Man UP and find a nice lady to escort into this restaurant? The food is great! And if you get beaten, robbed and thrown in the alley it’s all your fault! C’mon in! Be a man!”

Most of the women stand with him, and echo his “Man UP!” call, ululating in chorus. The barbeque crowd jeers at him. The men in the shadows gnaw on their dried out jerky and stare at him in utter silence. He goes back into the failing restaurant and tells everyone inside how great the service is. As he speaks, another male patron is beaten, robbed, and as he’s being ejected out the back door he grabs a knife in the kitchen, then stabs himself in the heart and dies in the alley.

No in the restaurant one says a word, everyone looks away and pretends nothing just happened.

I believe this fills out the scenario a bit. How one views the restaurant depends on where one stands. Sitting in a cozy booth in the back, with family all around, the restaurant is a great place. Standing outside by the barbeque grills, the restaurant may look too expensive, the dress code too stuffy. From across the street in the shadows the restaurant looks good, but seeing man after man being beaten, robbed, and thrown away into a dumpster-strewn alley leads to a different perspective on the restaurant than one might get in the cosy back booth. The view from the backside of the restaurant, the alley? Standing outside, with empty pockets, black eyes, and a broken nose & fingers, the restaurant is a crooked deal, run by thieves, cheats and liars.

And the men in the shadows, persona non grata in the restaurant and at the grill, all talk about what REALLY happens in the restaurant.

The men at the grill eat the barbeque and occasionally talk to the men across the street about how the quality of the meat being grilled is steadily declining. But, the men at the grill continue to eat the ever-toughening and ever-cheaper meat, because they can, and because it’s what is available.

1st 14 years of marriage, culminating in a typical wife filed divorce and a hellish 18 mo. separation, followed now with 8 years of great marriage. As I approach 22nd anniversary in less than 2 weeks, weighing the whole 22 years there was more bad than good relationally, allowing for other factors, how its been last 8 years, that I have 4 kids, 2 are raised and in uni, and they all are stellar citizens, that counts for something and brings the scale into balance.

Would I do it over is an impossible question to ask because you cant be sure. Safe to say if I could KNOW that Id go thru what i did, even the promise of it ending well and the wonderful kids would be way to abstract to make me choose to plow through it all.

Like deti, if I found myself single, well i wont use an absolute/I wont say never IOW, but I highly doubt Id marry again, lets say it would take some kind of exceptional woman.

Luckily my boys (19 and 15) seem to have broken the code already and are adroit about girls

What you wrote was indeed shaming language. I think you both probably didn’t mean it, based on your other posts I’ve read, but it came out that way. Culture is such that I think there are people doing it without even realizing it. Studying this will be real useful in thinking on
such things, especially maybe to understand why we are seeing those things as such.

@sunshinemary

The thing is, sometimes I think only one side of the anti-marriage argument gets presented, the negative side.

The problem is the pro-marriage side (what you are talking about) gets so much airtime in society at large,
in the churches, in the media, in government, and so on. We hear all the time that we should be manning up and marrying the first woman that comes along, forget the consequences, and things like what you wrote. The problem with things as they are is that our voices trying to point out all the things we do get drowned out. We don’t get heard, not even a peep. The manosphere or androsphere or whatever you call it is a great thing where we can actually express some of these things, but it’s still 0.001% of the total chatter out there. Keep in mind, you are in such a place and you will hear the other side. All we hear overall is that we need to marry, and get shamed because we don’t. Or how men overall, even the ones that are doing a good job as husband and father by the objective non-feminist definition, are failing as fathers and failing as husbands. We’ve heard enough, and personally I know I don’t need to be adding to it for myself or for others. We need more encouragement, more respect as human beings, and more objective hope across all of society, not admonishment, shame and dehumanization as we keep getting now.

For Dalrock’s restaurant analogy, which you praised, it’s a very incomplete picture. Be sure to find Anonymous Reader’s post of June 15, 2012 at 11:30 am, and deti’s comment of June 15, 2012 at 11:40 am, which completes out the analogy. Remember most of us are not the ones eating happily in the restaurant. Most of us are the ones that never got to go in, got in, got beaten up, robbed, and thrown out, or the ones beyond the grills, or the ones that stood closeby enough to see all this going on and value our lives too much to even try going in.

Deti wrote:

Our society no longer protects men’s investment and commitment in his marriage. Once he marries, he is not protected, but rather EXPOSED to great risk. His society no longer gives him any assurances or protections.

Yes, his risk might pay off. Yes, he might reap great rewards from marriage. But what if he is wrong?

This is exactly the problem when it comes to risks. DreadpiratKevin spoke of getting to raise his kids and see them grow into strong men. While one could count this as a reward or blessing, as I described it can turn into a curse very easily. In other words, blessing is replaced with curse and reward is replaced with risk. Marriage has turned into a very unique venture in society in this regard, in that these things can be directly stolen from men with no consequences whatsoever. Marriage 2.0 is such that any kind of “rewards” a man might see in it are only due to the pleasure and whims of his wife at any one moment and can be taken away and turned against him anytime she starts feeling unhaaaapy.

And all I’ve been talking about so far in this post thread is the perceptions I get of those who have been thrown into the divorce meat-grinder. I really haven’t begun on the “happily married” side of the perceptions yet.

I do feel badly if my comment at 7:37 may seem like shaming. If you feel that it is, I ask that you please remove it. Also the shamefull comment I made to Feminist Hater at 8:52; I would not want someone else reading this blog to get the wrong impression of him based on what I wrote so if you feel it best to remove that, please do. If they are best left up, then I will wear my shame and take what will come. Thank you.

I don’t think it requires deletion, nor do I think you need to wear any shame. However, if you want I’ll zap it for you. This stuff can be intensely personal, often unintended on the one hand and/or unconscious on the other. But there is also profit from the conversation in the form of understanding.

I do understand. If there could be profit from the conversation, I am strong enough to take whatever is doled out. I have the support of my husband who read over my comment before I posted it. He knows how I feel about the issue and the sincerity of what I write. I will leave it to you to decide what will be best in this situation.

As far as accountability, I stand by everything I say and if I need to be held accountable then I am not going to shy away from it.

You know, AR, that was actually a fairly disturbing description of an image that I am not sure I really want in my head. In fact, I think I have peeked out the restaurant window enough now and would prefer to draw the blinds around our little table. I no longer want to be able to see this slow motion train wreck in progess. Please tell me how to un-know all this now.

@Anonymous Reader:
Even if you weren’t eating with any of the women at the restaurant, they can say you said something unpleasant to them and get you roughed up too.Vive la relational aggression
Incidentally, it is now becoming a hot topic that women are bullying each other to get to the men they really want.
Guess it wasn’t an issue when men were the only ones affected by that through reduced dating or employment prospects 🙂

@ Jacquie-“I have the support of my husband who read over my comment before I posted it. He knows how I feel about the issue and the sincerity of what I write. I will leave it to you to decide what will be best in this situation.”

And….This is the same man who put up with a feminist harpie for 15 yrs.(You yourself have said this is how you acted, im not intending this as an insult). Furthermore he isn’t even a part of this conversation. So why even include this in your reply. Red pill men know why, but i bet you don’t.

I hate what my mother did to my dad. I hate what I see other women do to men. I hate that I feel ashamed sometimes for being a female because of the actions of a majority of the females.

This is someone who at least partially gets it. By polite dialogue we can win her as an ally… and we need all the help we can get.

Slamming sympathetic women like her, is equivalent to the feminists who treat all good men as rapists/abusers/etc. I tune those people out automatically due to false accusation, and if they ever did have something of value to say, well guess what, I’m too offended to stick around and hear it, and I no longer trust ANYTHING that source says because i don’t beleve they even have basic goodwill.

Don’t do the same to Jacquie. It serves no purpose to slam the either innocent or the repentant. If she ever was part of the problem, she isn’t now.

@ Sunshine
About your question…I would say that even though Jacquie and I had rough spots during our first quarter century, the calculated risk I took definitely has its rewards. I have great plans for our future together.

sunshinemary wrote: Please tell me how to un-know all this now.
Joshua wrote: @ sunshinemary – Imagine if men reacted that way when bad things happened to women and children.

Haha, please disregard that last overly-dramatic post of mine about wanting to unknow all this. Off-topic explanation: I’m usually a cool-headed person, but I was all emotional because I was sitting in the ER with a bleeding child. After being dosed with atavan, she fell asleep and left me anxiously pacing to and fro and texting my husband once every three seconds. To distract myself, I decided to look in here; hence my little drama moment. Child is stitched up and okay now and has learned a painful truism about not putting ones’ fingers into a blender to dislodge a frozen strawberry without first unplugging it. 🙂 Carry on.

Anyway, I have a question for the married men. On balance, would you say that the benefits have outweighed the risks for you personally with respect to marriage? Have the rewards been worth the hassle? A truthful answer please, not just a knee-jerk women-are-such-a- pain-in-the-@ss-avoid-them-like-the-plague response.

Men get oneitis because it’s a perversion of a good and natural desire to love our lifelong wife. So, this is a bit like asking if we like eating. We have to eat, but some things are good for us, some are bad, and some are simply poison. Very often, we have found that the candy offered made for a very unsatisfactory meal, and was soon gone.

Feminist hater quote
“Sunshine, prove that marriage makes men healthier, wealthier, happier and get more sex rather than those things allowing those men to have better marriages. In other words, causality. Prove that marriage is the actual cause of these things and not just an effect of them. Point out why a man should risk EVERYTHING on marriage when there’s a 50 % chance of divorce and divorce very often to not equals slavery. ”

To SunshineMary
I would take a different angle with this. Part of why that could be true is that these stats are in the past. The older generations have some benefits of marriage 1.0 and that could be the reason as the why the stats show that men are better off married. Marriage 1.0 plus marriage 2.0 mixed in the stats is still better on average then just marriage 2.0 numbers alone.

While I think AR’s analogy is very accurate, I think it needs a small change.

The blokes in the alley often don’t even have jerky to chew on. I think it’s more likely that they have lettuce, and rather wilted bit at that. Everyonce in a while they might find a few scraps of meat to chew on, but the rest of the time they’re stuck eating rabbit food.

It’s hard to relate something to someone that doesn’t understand the place you are in and empathize with it. Then as the quote above, a lot are more offended than anything because they take it as something they have to defend since they are married and feel the need to defend their choice, rather than listening and seeking understanding.

Some married people certainly take criticisms of marriage personally, as an attack they feel that they have to defend against. Some people, especially those from older generations than mine, seem to see a large element of duty in choosing marriage, and also associate it with masculinity, so speaking out against marriage can be seen by them as attacking their values, as well as one of their most important life choices. I also think there is a real issue there as regards them not understanding how things have changed since they were young. Another element seem to be almost mascochistic about marriage. They regard avoiding marriage because of the risks as weakness, and marriage and children as something a man MUST do, whatever the cost.

In other words, people have different ways of approaching making decisions about mportant subjects like marriage, and they usually have difficulty understanding the decisions of those who go about their decision making in a different way. Hence my comment on why I don’t believe framing marriage as a risk based decision is going to be convincing to anyone other than those who already think that way.

That said, the usual analogy that seems to be adopted in most spheres is the hand-grenade analogy. Basically it says if you were presented with a box of hand-grenades, you knew that there was a 75% chance of one going off if you pulled the pin, and knew there was no way to tell which ones would go off, would you take one and pull the pin? Most may not relate, but with a lot of men, that’s really the point that marriage has gotten to these days.

Yes. The key point of this analogy is the uncertainty. I think a few of the pro marriage commentors here have been making too many unsubstantiated claims about the level of control men can have over aspects of marriage that are largely unknowns. Women can deceive men about who they are before marriage. They can change after marriages. You can’t know how your kids are going to turn out. This was always been the case of course, but what’s different now is the environment in which these decisions are being made. This environment allows men precious little space to make mistakes, with the consequences being significant if his ability to divine the future is wrong. Making the wrong decision, based on scant information that makes each choice look very much like the others, can now seriously blow up in your face.

Our society no longer protects men’s investment and commitment in his marriage. Once he marries, he is not protected, but rather EXPOSED to great risk. His society no longer gives him any assurances or protections.

Yes, his risk might pay off. Yes, he might reap great rewards from marriage. But what if he is wrong? What if she simply decides she does not want him or love him anymore? What if something goes wrong? A reversal of fortune, a job loss, a devastating injury, a medical problem, another more alpha man she finds more attractive whom she decides to cheat with in a moment of female weakness?

Ok, this whole post was awesome, but I think this part above is advancing a particularly interesting part of this whole marriage debate that I haven’t really seen mentioned in the Manosphere before.

I’ll make an economics analogy here, which is not my forte so perhaps someone else more familiar with the topic can expand/clarify if I mess it up.

Investors won’t start new ventures which require long term commitments before return in certain locales if the environment in that locale is not stable, or which poses particular risks to that type of endeavor. Instead, they will go to a more hospitable locale, or if no such locale exists, they will focus on other ventures. In terms of stability, the investors will want to be certain that, for example, new taxes won’t be levied, or new punitive laws won’t be enacted after their venture has already been started and they are locked in. They also want to be sure that there will be no civil unrest which could damage their ability to do business, no collapse of the currency which would devalue their holdings. They don’t want to be sued by local employees or by the Government of the locale they operate in. Seeing as a prospective venture is never a guarantee of profit, an investor will look elsewhere if they not only have to worry just about whether their venture alone will succeed, but also about whether the conditions of the environment that they choose to operate in will screw them over. So the result of bad investing conditions in a locale is that investors don’t invest, creating less opportunities for many within in that environment to be better off.

Likewise, a successful marriage requires a lot of long term investment from a man in order to be successful, but the outright hostility of the western world towards his investment (in terms of biased divorce, custody and child support laws) makes such a long term investment untenable to many “investors”. As a result, the potential benefits of that marriages, to the man, the woman, the children and to society at large are not realized.

Okay, had sometime to think. Jacquie, I accept your apology and would like to offer one of my own. I apologise for the comment made about your father. That was not called for and not acceptable. Truly sorry for that statement.

I would like to add that what you mistake for ‘hate’ is actually anger and frustration on my part. As Deti said, these issues and the issues facing society at large fills one with dread. There is no real way to escape it and even shutting the curtains, as Sunshine Mary suggested, will not help us in the long run.

Also remember that God rebukes hardest those he loves. And don’t take this too much to heart, but I feel the same way. I critique those I actually love, sometimes harshly and sometimes with anger. Therefore, when I get angry with the actions of women, I genuinely use that anger to at least try to make them understand their folly. I often speak to those I love, who actually surround me in day to day life, with the same tenacity that I do here. If I truly hated women and didn’t love them, I would simply say absolutely nothing. For their current actions are sinful and their sin will lead them to their own punishment, far more than I could ever prescribe.

Yes, sometimes us men joke about women, or their actions, but I certainly don’t do it because I get some sort of sick pleasure from seeing women fall. I do it because if one did not laugh from time to time, even at those one loves, one would feel even more dread and heartache.

Hate is a strong word as they say. It is usually followed by a statement that includes death or some sort of sadistic torture. I don’t think I’ve ever said anything remotely close when I speak about women. Harsh… yes. Full of hate, venom or what have you… no.

We are all human and make mistakes. One can only ask forgiveness and then truly try to improve.

Well, Feminist Hater, women have traditionally adapted rather well to men’s anger and frustration. They know how and why they provoke it and what canned responses to dole out: shaming tactics, ridicule, ‘let’s you and him fight’, further demands to oppress men and strip them of whatever freedom they have, and so on. Or, of course, ducking and then offering submissive sex, if the angry man in question is, you know, attractive.

It’s nothing new to them. They expect it and revel in it, because it gets them attention, focus and just plainly gives them what they want. And men’s anger, especially when coated in a right-wing narrative, is practically a bonanza for feminists because it props up their legitimacy and ideologically driven paranoia.

I suspect the time is coming, though, when whatever amount of anger Western men have towards women will slowly but surely give way to indifference and ridicule. And that’s good.

Anger and frustration is born out of disillusionment, but whatever illusions Western men still have about their women are evaporating. A growing number of men won’t actually get angry at any woman for any reason in the first place because he won’t even be expecting her to behave as a responsible adult with a brain and self-restraint. Imagine that! Do you get angry at pigeons that shit on your car’s windscreen? Of course not. This will be an uncomfortable trap for women, because they know how to handle men’s anger and frustration but have no idea how to respond to men’s indifference – which is what the West sorely needs, to tell the truth.

Of course, we cannot expect men who got disemboweled in divorce court not to feel anger and frustration, but such men are increasingly rare as a smaller and smaller segment of men are marrying in the first place.

Another development I welcome is the spread of ridicule and humor directed at women in the Androsphere. Whereas women rarely have a good sense of humor, men are the masters of it, and sometimes humor is the only proper response to this grotesque, misshapen world populated by a race of cretins. Women have been joking about men and ridiculing them for thousands of years, I say it’s time we start giving them a taste of their own medicine. The Russian people have invented thousands of jokes about the idiocy of communism. Feminism and gynocentrism in general deserves the same treatment. When will Western men start en masse to make fun of their women’s outrageous complaints, sense of entitlement, deteriorating hygiene, hamsters, absolute lack of ability to select and keep good men and overall lameness?

Do not dash at the totems of gynocentrism in anger! Topple them in play!

I appreciate your words and the time you took to write them. They have helped me understand much more from another perspective some things I’d missed. I do have a long way to go and will not reach full understanding until the day I leave this earth. Between now and then I can only do my best with what I have and what I gain from my experiences.

All of what you said is true. Much of what men are doing is evaluating where best to make their investments and what rewards might be had. But as to marriage the analysis is simpler than this.

I think most men are geared toward marriage because it provided some sexual predictability and stability. Men are more geared toward unpredictability and instability in things such as their jobs and social situations. On balance, men handle conflict better and more rationally than women, and are usually more adaptable to varying conditions. But most men don’t have vast sexual options open to them. By contrast, the average woman need only walk to the nearest bar and select a man to have sex with. The point is that men by and large want to get married, if for no other reason than to have a regular sex partner.

The rewards have declined because the quality of availble women has declined. The necessary investment has gone up because women are demanding more and more of husbands in the way of household chores, parenting, “equality” and so forth.

But the real reason men are avoiding marriage, I think, is because the risks are so high. The risk of failure — and the consequences of failure — have shot up exponentially in the past 40 years. Before about 1970, men had legal and social protections against divorce absent husband fault. If the wife was at fault (usually through adultery or abandonment) or simply wanted out of the marriage, the wife left with little more than her premarital property, personal effects and maybe a very small settlement. No way would she be awarded a dime in alimony or spousal support. That would be rewarding bad behavior. Child custody defaulted to the father. The marital property and the children remained with the partner/parent who did not leave the marriage. There were tight controls on hypergamy. Extramarital affairs were taboo and if a wife engaged in one, she could expect to be kicked to the curb with little more than the clothes on her back. After that she would be a societal pariah, a slut, a homewrecker, and possibly considered mentally ill. She would be subject to severe societal shaming and loss of monetary support. Women did not have nearly the career opportunities they have now, so she risked poverty. She probably would not remarry. No sane man would have her because after all, if she cheated on a prior husband, she would most likely cheat on another.

When I was a kid coming up in the midwest in the 1970s and early 1980s even, a divorce in my little town was a minor scandal. And if the cause of the divorce was wife infidelity? She was literally run out of town on a rail, or moved away in disgrace, never to be seen or heard from again.

The point is there were societal and legal efforts to manage the risk for men and the society.

Those risk management techniques are gone now. There is no shame now in a woman divorcing for any reason or no reason at all. She can simply decide she is “not haaaaappy” and it’s to the courthouse she goes. No matter the reason for divorce, the husband can count on losing the house, his money savings, half his pension, and probably half his income for at least a couple of years. At least 20% of his income will be seized as child support, another 25 to 30% for alimony for at least a year or two, probably longer. He will pay child support until that child is out of college. He will probably continue to pay for health insurance for her and for the kids. Child custody defaults to the mother. She will get the house and the furniture. And she will get all this EVEN IF SHE IS FULLY AT FAULT AND IS THE SOLE CAUSE for the divorce. She will get all this even if the local college football team ran train on her on the 10:00 evening news with her wedding ring in full view.

That’s why marriage is failing now. The risks have literally become almost unmanageable, to the point where the only way to manage them is to avoid encountering the risk altogether. Is that good for society? No way. Is it advisable for individuals? Yes, it is.

FH wrote: ” For their current actions are sinful and their sin will lead them to their own punishment, far more than I could ever prescribe. ”

I think this is exactly right. The insane levels of sin, self-glorification, family destruction, spiritual decline, etc among women in our society have come about because they are not willing to listen to correction, especially if the correction is coming from a man. For myself I intend to try to influence women around me in the church to take a look at some of their behaviors and assumptions, but I need my own thinking to be straightened out at times. That’s why I personally don’t mind being the recipient of some unpleasant interactions here; usually when some dude tells me a variation on the theme of, “No, you are so wrong, and you are a dumb b*tch, women are all dumb b*itches”, I just figure he needs to vent the ticked off stuff first and then he’ll get around to telling me what he actually objects to about what I had written. Often his point ends up being a good one, useful to me in my objective of rooting out any remaining vestiges of feminism in my framework.

Suz wrote, “Phenomenal as usual, deti.”

Can’t we start an online petition or something to get him to start a blog, too? Even when he says the same things as someone else, he says it better.

Hollenhund wrote: “I suspect the time is coming, though, when whatever amount of anger Western men have towards women will slowly but surely give way to indifference and ridicule.”

I think this has already begun to happen to some extent. I’m not sure, but I think if indifference becomes more widespread, obnoxious female behavior may increase for a while as an attention-getting attempt. I have noticed with my four-year-old that if I ignore her temper tantrums, she screams and kicks more intensely for a bit but then stops sooner.

sunshinemaryYou know, AR, that was actually a fairly disturbing description of an image that I am not sure I really want in my head. In fact, I think I have peeked out the restaurant window enough now and would prefer to draw the blinds around our little table. I no longer want to be able to see this slow motion train wreck in progess. Please tell me how to un-know all this now.

Forgot to reply to this posting.
Primus: I’m glad to read that your child is OK.
Secundus….my answer.

“That’s why I personally don’t mind being the recipient of some unpleasant interactions here; usually when some dude tells me a variation on the theme of, “No, you are so wrong, and you are a dumb b*tch, women are all dumb b*itches”, I just figure he needs to vent the ticked off stuff first and then he’ll get around to telling me what he actually objects to about what I had written. Often his point ends up being a good one, useful to me in my objective of rooting out any remaining vestiges of feminism in my framework.”

This restaurant analogy is fantastic. I’ll add to the picture.
Women do not understand how badly a man needs to eat. She does not understand how hungry he can get. Men produce 12-17 times more testosterone than women which means that we are 12-17 times hungrier than women. This is why we open grills even though the quality of the meat is declining and chew on jerky. We have to eat.
Women’s hunger varies depending on quality of escorts available. Even though they say they want to eat in the restaurant, they are attracted to men with the most female company at their grills. These men usually treat the women at the grills poorly. Some of these men don’t even want the women at their grills, but the women continue to flock. The women want to make those grillmasters their escorts to the restaurant. These men make the women very hungry. Even women who said that they would only eat at the restaurant find themselves famished in their presence and tempted to eat wiith them.
But most men do not receive any attention from the women. The men who chew on jerky are reviled by the women. The men who have no women at their grils are invisible to most women. They don’t make the women hungry at all. Occasionally a woman will talk to one of these men about how she wants to eat with the grillmaster who has flocks of women. Or she complains about the grillmaster who fed her, but when she returned for another meal, he acted like he did not know her. Or she might tell him that she will eat at his grill if he gives her money to buy food. He gives her money and she buys food but immediately runs to one of the grillmasters in hopes that he will dine with her.
After a while, the women realize that the grillmasters will never take them to the restaurant. But the women really, really want to eat at the restaurant. So these women look for the men with no women at their grills and shame them into taking them into the restaurant. “Look, there is no one at your grill. You should be happy I want to eat with you. But I’ll only eat with you if you take me to the restaurant. Just ignore the barbeque sauce on my hands and mouth. Be a man!”
But the women are slowly discovering that these men do not want to eat at the restaurant. They know what happens there. They know that they risk getting beat up and robbed if they anger her. So some men decided that they would rather starve and found other things to occupy their time. Some men decided that dried jerky was better than grilling. Some of these men talked to the grillmasters and learned their secrets. Now they are becoming grillmasters.

Dalrock – great blog with always something to make you think. But I have a question related to this problem. You and others, particularly Athol Kay have written about “married man’s game.” The basic concept I have heard from others in real life. The problem Firepower brought up about the “the complicated degradations one must put themselves through to create a “natural and spontaneous” marriage” (in his words) has not really been addressed. Maybe another post would be in order. If all this gaming is necessary, then it is not natural and spontaneous. In what way was he not correct?

If a man has to “game” his wife in order to receive “love” then what sort of love is it? The idea strikes me as repulsive. I have never been able to wrap my mind around the process of gaming for attraction, then waiting for so-called love to come out of that process. It seems like we are told:

1. Alpha game=female attraction
2.???
3. Love and loyalty

No one fills in step 2. Unless I misunderstand you, you advise men to continue with the same sort of thing that went on during the rut. The only reasonable assumption is that a woman is incapable of keeping a vow simply because it was a vow and for no other reason. Beyond that, why isn’t it reasonable to assume they do not have love, pity, nor compassion? Love is selfless and disinterested. Love looks on its object as more than a source of wealth or validation or whatever. It is outside of self as in I Corinthians 13. As Christians, we know that God loves us not because of some merit we have but out of his own character. Our own growth should be to love God not because of something we are going to get but because of his own essence or Being. Thou art worthy. . . Jesus Christ doesn’t have to constantly game the Church. If this kind of thing is necessary to gain the “love” of women then it would seem reasonable to assume that we are dealing with a morally defective mercenary mind completely incapable of anything worthy of being described as love. Lust surely, self-interest, always, but love? Hardly. Real friendship between men doesn’t work like this. I don’t even think the loyalty between a man and his dog works like this. Really, how does anyone rationalise this in their own mind? Other than the obvious want of children of what possible benefit is this?

Caradoc, it is just the way women are. Some women are very moral, will keep vows, and resist temptation. But you make it easier for a wife if you have some “Game”. It is really just behaving like men used to behave before that was “problematised” by the broader culture. If a woman knows you are with her for the duration, she will not mind, and may in fact enjoy, a bit of masculine treatment.

A man should stay faithful to his wife, but it is easier if she looks as cute as possible. In the same way, a woman should stay faithful to her husband, and that is made easier if he has some of the traditional masculine strengths.

I imagine that a lot of men think – and feminists have encouraged them to think like this – that if you would dislike it, as a man, so will a woman. But women are not men, and their buttons are pushed by things that men would not like. Popular culture used to be honest about this, but not so much these days. For example, being patronised would not turn a husband on, but it can turn a wife on. She will deny it, and even pretend to be annoyed, but it is actually an effective panty moistener. It is one reason why I often tell my wife, “good girl”.

@Caradoc:
I share your sentiment, which is why it’s very difficult for me to sympathise with scorned women who knew great guys and ignored them in order that they could sate their lust …
then get mad the guy they slutted around with, didn’t want any more of them after.
(Well … why not? Those who choose others who will treat them badly … are treating badly, those who would treat them well … Another thing to consider is, how bad are those men really, if women are willing to keep sex exclusive with them?)

David C: I understand that, but everything you are describing is sexual attraction. Sexual attraction isn’t necessarily love. It is like credit and wealth. Credit spends like money and acts like money in the short term. But it is absolutely not wealth, as the West is learning. Wealth is tangible and accumulates, credit is ephemeral, parasitic, and can be taken. Is the female even capable of love, or is it all sexual attraction “credit” to be manipulated? It seems to me to be the latter. I have looked for years for an argument to the contrary.

Caradoc, is it a meaningful question? Does my cat love me? Yes, as far as he can, as a cat. He loves me in the way cats love. So too my wife. She often says she loves me. I am not sure what that means. I suspect it includes affection, but also, I imagine, a lot of respect and sexual attraction. As the Manosphere trope has it, women “fall in respect”, not “love”. This is why men are often bewildered at the fickleness of a woman’s love. Men love out of duty. Women have to fall in love again every day.

I used to worry that I didn’t “love” my wife properly, but thinking and reading scripture and secular sources made me realise that I do, in the way a husband loves his wife. It is hard to define, but it is clear-eyed, unsentimental love, with a large admixture of amused condescension. As my ideas cleared and reformed, I started to love her as a woman, not as an angel or an ideal.

It is not helpful to be angelistic, and attempt to separate sexual attraction from romance. It is like trying to separate body from soul. They are linked, and express each other. A man starts out with tender and romantic feelings, but it is proper that they eventually grow into a desire to make passionate love to a woman. The latter is not baser or less spiritual than the former. It is gnostic error to believe that.

@ Caradoc
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and while I haven’t been able to sort it all out, and probably never will, I do have some thoughts on it thus far.

The marriage model in the Bible states that women are to submit to their husbands and men are to love their wives; this part of scripture does not tell wives to love their husbands but in another portion where older women are told how they are to conduct themselves and teach the younger women to love their husbands (yet they are still not commanded to love.) In a book I am reading the author illustrates the husband/wife relationship in parallel to the relationship between Christ and the church. The husband is the head of the marriage whole while the wife is the literal body, under the husband, supporting the head. Therefore where the man is the head, the brain, the control center of the whole, the logical thinker, the wife is the body containing the heart, thinking with emotions more than thought.

With this in mind I thought about what scripture says about the heart being deceitful above all else and desperately wicked. That’s the heart, in the body, this is the wife. As responsible human beings we can control our lusts and live a respectable life, but we have to think with our minds and not our emotions to do this; it is our logical thinking of who God is (or what is the right thing to do) that keeps us mindful of our behaviors more so than how we feel and we can override our lusts. For a marriage to succeed this needs to be true of it also, the mind over the heart, the husband over the wife.

Game in marriage isn’t for a man to get or keep the love of his wife more than it is to keep control of the emotions that can derail the whole. The love is there (in the heart), but susceptible to the whims of lust that must be tamped down and controlled by the mind. The woman is the weaker vessel and more likely to be deceived, which is why the serpent approached Eve and not Adam. Personally, if more women recognized their weakness their lives would be much more pleasant for them and for those around them. Recognizing ones weakness is where strength begins and a woman who knows she needs to fix herself under her man is far stronger than any woman who thinks she is strong in her independence, she is only deluding herself thus saving the serpent from doing the work.

Also I don’t know if I believe game is something new. The more I learn about it it appears to be men’s natural masculinity and self respect emerging in each individual man. For a lot of men they are tapping into it to gain what they can from women; for most, it is out of frustration of what they see in current day society. Until recent decades when men were taught, told and shamed into not being masculine it was who a man was, it was how he conducted his life. Masculinity was a gift that a man gave his wife, it was how he loved her. Not necessarily the emotional stuff feminists tell men they need to show love, but real love of provision and protection over what he cared for, his woman, his family and what they built together. The woman gifted the man in return with her femininity and her respect to him. Gaming your wife is a gift; it shows that you love her and you don’t give a damn about what anyone says about it because you are giving her the strength she needs from you to support you as the head and she is the body aligning herself under you. I know I need more strength from my husband today than women generations ago as I have the constant barrage of messages around me telling me lie after lie of how I am to conduct myself and I have to fight it. I respect my husband more for standing up to the pressure of society telling him who is supposed to be and instead tapping into who he was made to be. If this is called gaming then so be it, I see it as his gift to me of his masculinity not a way to coerce love from me, he already has that.

David C: I suppose that is the answer I already knew. Or maybe it isn’t even a meaningful question. They don’t ‘love’ the man, not his actual person. In my mind, that makes the whole “what about when you get old” meme ring very hollow.

I don’t mean to separate sexual attraction from romance. What I am talking about is the day-to-day existence, the real work that has to be done to live and to try and live well. Every day isn’t romantic. Dirty diapers and dirty toilets and sickness and vomit and bills and broken fences and broken machinery and sick animals are neither romantic nor sexual. A man cannot count on a woman to be there when she isn’t being romanced, apparently. Christianity doesn’t seem to change that. I don’t think when God told Adam he needed a helper he meant exclusively or even primarily a sexual counterpart. That is important but not the most important. But the way it works in practice that seems to be the most important. Life ain’t a fairy tale.

Caradoc, you’ve asked excellent questions. And while Im neither a game disciple nor a game rejector I will say that you likely will not get a satisfactory answer to what you are asking, what I mean is satisfactory to YOU (or me), I cannot arbitrate satisfactory objectively I suppose, even if I see the clear logic in what you are saying.
This is why there are some , tricks? lacking batter word, in game that can smooth some things in marriage and be beneficial in other ways in certain circumstances, I am not prepared to adopt it as an enveloping all encompassing life philosophy, and I am definitely not prepared to “go to game” the way so many seem to on any matter, holding it forth with an aura of soft white light and chorus of Ahhhhhhh…..some of the nuts and bolts are cool, Im not finding the whole machine worthy though. I agree with you, if a system that requires such religiosity and ever devoted fellowship with other adherents is needed to have a right and proper marriage relationship, then there is something lacking in one or both people in the couple.
If, as Jacquie says its really just old fashioned masculinity manifest, that would be cool, but I am convinced that that descriptor is insufficient for deep game believers, who seem to be ever refining and out guru-ing one another with newer and more complex theories. While it is clever and amusing to read even the anecdotes of the PUA as he games the girl under a very specific set of circumstances, the leap to that and a comprehensive system of marriage management is one I cannot make and not see it as role playing.

You’re right, Caradoc. Life ain’t a fairy tale which makes me wonder why Firepower commented as if he believes there is anything “natural and spontaneous” about marriage, or should be.

Marriage is a complex evolving relationship, requiring constant work in order to “evolve” successfully. Both men and women love, and both men and women “fall out of” love. Women fallout of love more easily, more so now that they’re trained to believe they can always “do better.” (Hypergamy vs. socially cultivated hypergamy.) Love grows stronger in a committed, properly maintained relationship, but it can still die, for either sex. Sure a man needs to work to “keep his wife in love with him;” in a natural society so does a woman, but our artificial society (surplus protects us from “natural” consequences) gives women far too many choices, and demands that she attempt to “have it all.” With constant exposure to fairy tales, women therefore have far greater incentive to devote their energies to everything BUT cultivating their love for their husbands.

Marital love is far more than attraction. It’s a complex combination of intertwined components: attraction, commitment (to each other and to the marriage) gratitude, shared devotion to the children, common (social, political, economic, religious) “enemies,” shared goals, values and history.

“Other than the obvious want of children of what possible benefit is this?”

In the presence of strong marital love, the benefits are deeply rewarding on many levels. However, these days the existence of so many factors that interfere with it’s growth, make marriage very very risky, especially for men. The overwhelming NEED (not merely the desire) to have children is really the only reason that a man should risk so much.

Jacquie, “Game in marriage isn’t for a man to get or keep the love of his wife more than it is to keep control of the emotions that can derail the whole. The love is there (in the heart), but susceptible to the whims of lust that must be tamped down and controlled by the mind”

Jacquie, that’s well-put. That fits with an explanation that Anonymous Reader made recently about Team Woman in which he described it as a train engine that COULD pull a lot of cars behind it if it would stay on the tracks, but in modern times it’s gone off the rails completely. In what you’ve explained, I see Game as being that force which could keep a marriage that’s still on the tracks from being derailed by modern Team Woman.

I also think that David Collard is on to something by saying that women their own way, the way a cat loves you. I think most women do not love the way Christ loved the church. Then again, we aren’t really commanded to do so. We are commanded to respect and obey, and of course we must be faithful and stick to our vows. I think we love children. But do we naturally love men in a self-sacrificial way? I want to say we do, but I actually suspect we don’t.

I see Game as being that force which could keep a marriage that’s still on the tracks from being derailed by modern Team Woman.
———————————————————————-
If I may, and not to speak for Caradoc, he can correct me if Im wrong, with due respect, this is the flavor of answers one always receives. The answers are very thoughtful, in some ways helpful, interesting, sometimes thought provoking, etc. But…..they don’t respond at all to Caradocs questions in the least. Answers to questions about game, most especially questions that can be perceived as having a slightly negative connotation or presenting a challenge to game (as opposed to those from folks who have never heard or it, or simply say it doesnt exist) are met with answers that are more fitting for the game grasshoppers, the students of game, the wide eyed, ready to soak up more and better analogies and descriptions and theory about game. There are myriad posts just like these, suz has written dozens, maybe hundreds of them, where they begin with either “game is not”….or…..”game is” and go on long pontificating meandering explanation of again another and newer take on game, to which the old guard gamesters will either bless them with approval or further refinement. It gives the impression of game being a notion, or a spectre or a phantom that if you hold your eyes a certain way its only visible in the periphery. Its this about it that I think many find so attractive because generally and especially men LOVE to mull over abstract things like that….and thats fine.

But Caradocs points are very specific and not really subject to or addressed by yet another round of descriptors of what the true meaning of GAME is, I am sorry to say.

Dalrock has in the past confused me with one who outright rejects game or has a moral issue with it or something but what I’m talking about here is actually the only problem I have with it regularly. I cannot get into the near mystical (almost breathless in some cases) manner in which it can be discussed and the guru status of some of those who are considered the zen masters of it. I like practical things that can be explained and harnessed, and it is either practical, or its ethereal. It it is practical….then it should be very easy to respond to Caradocs points with straightforward answers.

I agree, Emp. I think Game itself is practical, but I also think that it comes as a stunning revelation to men when they’re first exposed to it, since it’s so utterly foreign to what they’ve been taught is “appropriate male behavior.” It’s easy to see why many men see it as ethereal, and treat it rather like religion.

Suz wrote: “Both men and women love, and both men and women “fall out of” love.” That is exactly one of the problems I have. The very word “love” is so vague as to be near meaningless. I love the smell of a fresh hayfield. I love my mother. I love Italian food. I love God. Same word, completely different connotations. How is an emotional state into which one “falls” into or out of the same thing as any of these? It sounds more like some variant of lust to me, which must be maintained by novelty and intrigue. In what possible sense can a woman who has to have this kind of constant stimulation be said to “love” a man? Someone who needs to be constantly bribed, cajoled, or manipulated into loyalty is not really loyal, they are just a mercenary that has to be kept satisfied.

Empathologicalism: “If I may, and not to speak for Caradoc, he can correct me if Im wrong, with due respect, this is the flavor of answers one always receives. The answers are very thoughtful, in some ways helpful, interesting, sometimes thought provoking, etc. But…..they don’t respond at all to Caradocs questions in the least.” That is basically correct, although I think they do respond in a backhanded sort of manner, which is to say it confirms, so far, what I suspected: women DO NOT “love” any man disinterestedly and without reservation. He must work to earn. So what happens if he loses the ability to work? I don’t really doubt the reality of so-called “Game.” It works empirically. I don’t think it is a system that is 100% accurate. What I doubt is the results. Can it get a marriage to function? Maybe. Can it get a woman sexually interested? I think that is undeniable. But it doesn’t have any more to do with “love” than when Roissy uses it. “Love” seems to be a lie men tell themselves in order to feel better about something that is completely cutthroat. Maybe people cannot respond in a completely truthful manner about this.

I have also noticed the Bible does not command women to love their husbands. The older I get, the more telling that omission is.

Game “theory” explains a lot of what I have seen and confirms suspicions I have had my entire life. I have never believed that egalitarian attitudes are best for the health of a marriage. There is deep practical wisdom in St Paul. Respect is the woman’s version of marital love.

Game has helped me in my marriage enormously. I think it answers Freud’s famous question, What do Women Want? Once you have seen your wife vehemently swearing that she will never do what you have asked her to do, as she is doing it, you have learned something about women that no mainstream source will tell you. Because we are massively lied to about women these days, and have been for about 30 or 40 years. It IS exciting to finally have something that makes sense of so much and actually works.

Women may look like angels, but they are not. If you have an inflated idea of women, they will disappoint you. I have never had a very high opinion of women, and so I have never been disillusioned. I honestly don’t get this Western, especially American, overvaluation of women. It mystifies me. It is completely unbiblical. And my own church (RC) does not give women authority, presumably because they are unfit for it.

Caradoc: “I have also noticed the Bible does not command women to love their husbands. The older I get, the more telling that omission is.”
Empath: “I agree with what you say as well, and the lack of admonition for women to love is something I too have realized is important”
DC: “There is deep practical wisdom in St Paul. Respect is the woman’s version of marital love.”

I’ve heard the love and respect thing preached a fair bit, and the way I’ve always heard it goes like this:
1. The Bible commands wives to respect their husbands; wives are not naturally respectful so that is why the Bible commands them to respect.
2.The Bible does not command wives to love their husbands because they already do so; women naturally love, so there is no need to tell them to do so.

Caradoc, if I understand what you are saying, you disagree with #2. Are you saying that the Bible does not command women to love their husbands because they are simply incapable of doing so? I have never thought of that before. I wonder…

Actually, I ought to have added in the last post that David Collard really did address my question in his post at 6:59.

“Does my cat love me? Yes, as far as he can, as a cat. He loves me in the way cats love. So too my wife. She often says she loves me. I am not sure what that means.”

That is as much an answer as I suspect I will get. It confirms my suspicions. I would even push the analogy further. An old dog won’t leave his master because he is unhaaaapy or isn’t being gamed right. So, which form of “love” is superior? There is a difference between knowing something to be a fact and liking it that way.

@ sunshinemary: Given the way things are and the truth of the practical wisdom in St. Paul, yes, I think that is correct. I definitely disagree with that point 2.

I too wonder if that interpretation is not simply more pedestalising. Rather, perhaps, men are to love as Christ because we are capable of it. Women, lower in the hierarchy, are commanded to obedience and respect, because that is all that can be expected of them.

As for the suggestion that women do not naturally feel respect, they certainly do for the right man. The problem is that it may not be for their husbands.

“That is important but not the most important. But the way it works in practice that seems to be the most important. Life ain’t a fairy tale.”

That’s why masculinity is based on leadership & domination … once the fairy tale beginning runs out, it’s all about leading & dominating the relationship correctly

Which is why the likes of Athol place such a high importance on women, staying young & in shape, & dressing well at home for their man

The woman, has to make it worth the mans while, to lead & dominate, & steer the relationship, once the diapers & et al, come into play

Which is why there’s a natural preference for strong, dominating men, when it comes to the not so sexier parts of a relationship, a strong able to lead man, making & leading the tough choices, makes the woman fall for him all over again

Nature has a natural common sense & accomplishment, in its biology, men need to stop thinking being in touch with their feelings, or empathic, as modern society does not want successful masculine men

Men need to push the upper limits of their masculinity, & expand their horizons & embrace the surety of their masculinity

You lead by putting strength behind the weight of your principles

If you try & put principles before strength, your principles will not have the conviction or tenacity to carry them to their natural state

The strength required to place behind your principles, requires an absence of empathy & emotives, they cloud the issues & turn what should be a straight clear path, into one fraught with anything but what should strong clear, principles & morality

” It sounds more like some variant of lust to me, which must be maintained by novelty and intrigue. In what possible sense can a woman who has to have this kind of constant stimulation be said to “love” a man? Someone who needs to be constantly bribed, cajoled, or manipulated into loyalty is not really loyal, they are just a mercenary that has to be kept satisfied.”

You skipped right over the real point: Men and women BOTH fall in and out of the ephemeral “love” you describe. Both sexes are equally capable of being mercenary. Don’t conflate the capacity for it with the fact that women are more prone to it, due to a combination of hypergamy and a cultural environment that promotes hypergamy (rather than restraining and redirecting it.)

You’re dancing around the edges of, “Women aren’t capable of love,” which is a BS excuse for women’s crappy behavior. It implies that we can’t help it, and therefore need to be sheltered from and (arbitrarily) punished for it, just like helpless children. It’s the part of “Weaker Vessel” that women exploit for their own gain, and such exploitation is particularly effective among church men. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that “weaker” equates to “incapable.”

sunshinemary says:
“2.The Bible does not command wives to love their husbands because they already do so; women naturally love, so there is no need to tell them to do so.
Caradoc, if I understand what you are saying, you disagree with #2. Are you saying that the Bible does not command women to love their husbands because they are simply incapable of doing so? I have never thought of that before. I wonder…”

FWIW-In the second chapter of Titus Paul tells the older women to teach the younger women to love their husbands. Paul would not have written this if a woman was incapable of love. But it does leave me with the question as to why Paul needed to give this instruction. If women naturally love then they would not need to be taught to love (and additionally taught to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, and obedient to their own husbands.)

Jacquie wrote, “FWIW-In the second chapter of Titus Paul tells the older women to teach the younger women to love their husbands. Paul would not have written this if a woman was incapable of love. But it does leave me with the question as to why Paul needed to give this instruction. If women naturally love then they would not need to be taught to love (and additionally taught to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, and obedient to their own husbands.)”

Hello Jacquie, I am glad you showed up because there are some scripture points I want to argue but could not do so with the men (1 Timothy 2:12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.)

Titus 2:4 says “Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands”

This epistle was written in Greek and the word we translate as love is “phileo”. Phileo is friendship love; Paul is exhorting women to be friendly to their husbands (as opposed to b1tchy, one assumes). Phileo is also not unconditional; it is worldly, not spiritual love.

Ephesians 5:25-28 says “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”

The word used for “love” here is from the Greek word “agapao”, which is the unconditional, divine love of God. This would be no-strings-attached self-sacrificial love.

I do not know if Caradoc is correct in his interpretation. I need to study more about it. I cannot reject it hand out of mouth. I will not argue scripture with men but I will be glad to listen to their critique of my humble thoughts on the matter.

sunshinemary, I understand your scruples on the matter, but I am happy to have your thoughts. The point about the different kinds of love is an interesting one, and tends to support my interpretation. However I am no expert.

This brief discussion has actually clarified a couple of points for me.

sunshinemary, your point about women loving their children in a self-sacrificial way also fits in with my proposal. Love flows downwards, from Christ to man to woman to child. Respect and obedience flow upwards in return.

MackPUA: What you said makes perfect sense. But it isn’t “love,” certainly not coming from the side that requires the control. The controller (man) might indeed love the woman, but for the life of me I can not see how it can work in reverse.

Suz: I don’t think men do that. I don’t think men who are looking for no-strings attached physicality believe they are “in love” with their partner. I think they manipulate women to get what they want. In a more civilised age these men often met bad ends in short order. I think, among the hard core pick up crowd especially, “a woman” is a stand-in for the universal female principle. CS Lewis made a sharp distinction between Eros and Venus, I believe was the term he used. It is helpful (he thought so anyway) to distinguish between love for “female” and love for Elisabeth or Rachel. The universal versus the particular, in other words. The great emphasis placed on avoiding “oneitis” demonstrates that these fellows don’t love a woman, they love the female sex. Same word, radically different meaning. The only reason I don’t unequivocally say that women aren’t capable of love is that I think I have seen it. Of course, it was in people two generations removed from my own. Even so, it would not remove responsibility from women’s shoulders, because the vow is a one-way non-refundable ticket, whether you “fall out of love” or not. That is a problem of honour, not love, and a whole other bucket of worms.

Jacquie: “FWIW-In the second chapter of Titus Paul tells the older women to teach the younger women to love their husbands. Paul would not have written this if a woman was incapable of love. But it does leave me with the question as to why Paul needed to give this instruction. If women naturally love then they would not need to be taught to love (and additionally taught to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, and obedient to their own husbands.)”

I nearly brought that up. It does make one wonder why the necessity for this teaching. As sunshinemary wrote, it also might mean something else entirely, and not answer the question “Are women capable of love?”

sunshinemary: “This epistle was written in Greek and the word we translate as love is “phileo”. Phileo is friendship love; Paul is exhorting women to be friendly to their husbands (as opposed to b1tchy, one assumes). Phileo is also not unconditional; it is worldly, not spiritual love.” “The word used for “love” here is from the Greek word “agapao”, which is the unconditional, divine love of God. This would be no-strings-attached self-sacrificial love.”

Also very true. Sometimes I hesitate to make too much of that particular distinction. I know a great deal has been made about those two words in the context of John 21 and Jesus’ conversation with Peter. The use of the words may indeed signify what it suggests. If it does, just shooting from the hip, I think any man who walks into that is twice the fool.

On “oneitis”, this is in fact what the PUAs fear, because they know that men tend to fall hard for one woman. Most men surely recognise this trait in themselves.

I feel I am surrounded by experts on scripture. I can only argue from my own understanding and observation. On debating scripture with women, I don’t mind doing so in this forum. I would only object if there were official teaching going on, and there is not. This is just the Internet.

@David Collard: I was disagreeing with Suz’s assertion that men and women both “fall out of love.” I think men either fall hard for one, OR they don’t love at all, but rather use women as a means to an end; i.e. one good-looking woman is as good as the next. The emphasis on avoiding oneitis shows the latter trait. As a man, I completely understand their point. As a Christian, I think it is wrong.

Caradoc, it is also arguable that, as the often widowed sex, women have to be more willing to transfer their love. In earlier times, women might often find themselves traded around, even captured as booty. Bonding to their captors would be a good survival strategy.

I have seen genetic evidence that women were traded around a lot in ancient times. For example, the population of Iceland seems to have been founded by Norsemen taking Celtic girls there.

DC wrote, “Love flows downwards, from Christ to man to woman to child. Respect and obedience flow upwards in return.”

This does rather make sense. Agapao flows down the hierarchy but not up. Even feminists don’t question the natural order of women NOT sacrificing for men…and no one expects a child to love his parents sacrificially. But phileo can flow back and forth in the hierarchy. Respect flows up. This makes a lot of sense and explains why women seem to be able to love men in a friendly or sexual way but not a sacrificial way, whereas they CAN love their children sacrificially.

David, that makes a lot of sense and may very well be the case. I reckon the long and short of it is what I have thought for some years now. They really don’t “love.” They might respect, but only conditionally. Don’t trust them, because if they see a better deal they are going for it if they can. Briffault’s Law does explain it accurately. The last piece I don’t get is the old canard “what about when you get old?” What about it? Why tell a man he should count on some unstable fickle being that cannot sacrifice for him? What is it to take care of an old sick man if not sacrifice for no other reason than love or compassion? The miraculous thing is that Western Civilisation held together as long as it did.

Caradoc,
Are you saying that any man who loves a woman deeply, loves her forever, no mater what? I know the phrase “falling in and out of love” implies some sort of apparently causeless happenstance, that’s why I put it in quotes. Perhaps the better phrases would be “loves deeply” and “ceases to love.”
A man who loves a woman deeply can cease to love her. I think it’s relatively rare because male love is usually powerfully reinforced by male honor and duty, but it happens.

It’s rather ironic (or maybe just sad) that women are generally presumed to be more emotionally complex than men, because women *behave* more emotionally. I think it’s men who are far more likely to deeply and equally embrace all the interwoven threads of “true love.” By and large, they accept it for what it is and commit to it wholeheartedly. Women on the other hand, are likely to obsess over minutiae, magnifying the importance of some aspects and diminishing the importance of others. Once a woman loses that balance (most never start with it, due to cultural influences) she’s not likely to gain control of it without help from a dominant husband, usually because she can’t bring herself to believe that her husband’s (staid, no-drama) approach is the right one – she won’t trust him. She could learn to, but usually she won’t.

Caradoc , I am happily married. We have had some rough patches, but we are still together after 26 years. I am less cynical.

I have been surprised at how my wife does not like nursing me, when I am sick, for example. Women dislike weakness. She leans on me much more than I would have expected, although she is quite tough in her own way. I do have to hide my concerns from her sometimes. Of course, like all masks, a mask of unconcern can eventually become fixed and real.

(Nurses in hospital show sacrificial love. I have seen that. But I suspect it comes from a font of maternal love.)

But, she is devoted, in an almost Oriental way at times. She would not die for me, though I would for her. But I get all the wifely services. Even when the power fails, she still puts a meal in front of me, for example. And she has been willing to tolerate some real unpleasantness to please me. Women are like that.

I don’t think women are incapable of love. It is just, to coin a phrase, not love as we know it. The sociological rule is that groups may bargain for protection by offering service. Call it feudal. This is what wives have usually done. These days, women also have the option of offering fealty to male polticians instead, in exchange for the tribute of a vote.

“What is it to take care of an old sick man if not sacrifice for no other reason than love or compassion? The miraculous thing is that Western Civilisation held together as long as it did.”

@ Caradoc
I think you are forgetting “duty” , for most of Western Civilization there has been an assumption that you have a duty to your family and elders which was not based on love or even compassion. That is the greatest loss in the culture, the loss of belief in duty that is highter than the individual needs. It was previously understood in the culture that personal sacrifice for group good was desirable and now it is a much maligned trait in many ways, especially by feminists.

Although I have been fortunate to see many wives tenderly nurse their husbands through terrible illnesses ( and vice versa), I suspect that it may be related to the marriage dynamic quite a bit. Some spouses make terrible nurses and some make terrible patients. I also suspect that you may be right about nursing coming from maternal instict and women really do not want to deal with their husbands in a child/mother role.

Also, people bond over time. You develop loyalty. I agree that the extreme individualism of modern Western society is doing immense damage. But there is still a lot of valuing of duty. In an LTR, a strong reciprocal altruism develops. I won’t sleep with that pretty girl because you wouldn’t sleep with that attractive man (We are married, is the underlying thought.) I will wash your shirts so you can go to work in them to support the family. You get to follow your career now; mine can come later.

This kind of thinking used to be understood. But everything has to be analysed and problematised today. The calculus applied is short-term, paranoid and narrow-minded: what is in it for me, right now, is the constant query.

Antigrrrl, my wife just doesn’t like the nurse role. It irritates her. I used to wonder why, but now I think I know. Her model seems to be, which surprises me a bit, “working for the Man”. But she hates it when the man is more like a child, because of illness for example.

This is not meant to be a proper interpretation of St. Paul, more like some thoughts from a Catholic on what St. Paul said – husbands and wives (and Christians in general) are called to love [agape/caritas] one another. But St. Paul may be explaining how this is to be made manifest – husbands are called to love their wives like Christ, as much as they love their own body. (Cherishing them rather than just “using” them.) The love of God requires that they love wives in such a manner.

Women may be more likely to offer themselves or to serve when they are “in love” – but this is emotional and such behavior may go away if the feelings disappear. (Or if the feelings are in turn linked to the desire to possess a man, rather than valuing a man as a proper husband.) And so while they are not explicitly told to love their husbands with caritas, submission/obedience to their husbands is necessary component of their love of God. (And I think it could be argued that it is a component of their love of their husbands.) The love of the husband for the wive has the character of what is proper to one who has authority, while the love of the wive for the husband has the character of what is proper to one who is under authority.

Yes, pb. I come at this from a Catholic perspective too. I think your last line is particularly helpful. The passage is also an unpacking of what mutual subjection should look like. The husband is to have Christlike sacrificial love, even to dying for his wife in an extreme situation. The wife is to show her subjection through obedience, “in everything”.

Regarding the love men and women share, we had a simple conversation regarding something like this the other night where my husband explained to my girls how profoundly important respect is to a man. That, in fact, a man wants respect first in a relationship and then love as a close second. I don’t know how other men here feel about this, but I can say for the men I am close to this is very true. Men seem to be wired this way. It makes sense that the bible would call for women to respect their husbands for this reason AND because I think a woman’s love (lasting love) is born of respect.

Agree completely, Stingray. Respect comes first for me. I remember still how pleased and surprised I was when my sister-in-law told me that my wife respected me. And, yes, I suspect a wife’s love is grounded in respect.

BTW, I do remember this remark of yours from some time back. I didn’t realise that was you:

“Even when the balance does begin to come back around women will still feel like we are missing out on *something*. Inherently we understand that, not only are we weaker, we are not as intelligent or often times, as interesting.”

““Are you being abused by your man? A checklist for the Christian woman.” By Sunshine”

Badger LOL’d!

“Well, we are women, so that is not natural for us! 🙂 Until lately, I thought my emotions WERE the facts. lol”

This is something that took me a long, long time to really get. Because I was raised with this quasi-feminist mindset that women were fully rational and sensible decisionmakers, that it was infantilizing and insulting to suggest that a woman might be prone to think and make decisions with her emotions, and to regard her emotional state as a factual basis to insert into discussion and override any other considerations.

In fact I was taught that any suggestion at all that a woman might not be leading with her rational side was deeply insulting and misogynistic (the worst of which was the mere whisper that a woman was undergoing PMS.)

It was weird, because modern feminism first started out in getting women to measure themselves by male metrics, then turned around to cast female traits as superior to male ones.

Now that I’ve thought to ask women about it, many (MANY) have admitted as much to me – that they are often possessed by their emotions, to regard them as prime in any discussion unmitigated by any objective facts.

Dalrock in fact had a post where her quoted either a female commenter or a female blogger who told guys not to take women’s emotions so seriously.

Now when a woman gets mad, I do a quick mental check of whether I should be accountable for her emotional state (usually not but occasionally yes). In the former case, my response is “Oh, you’re upset? Not my problem. Come back when you have something to discuss and can do so without inflicting your emotional violence on me, an innocent party.”

Obviously, being aloof to a woman’s emotional volatility – being the rock in her tumbling seas – is a key part of game (it’s one of Roissy’s commandments).

Badger, they are all like that. Just this morning, my wife went off about our daughter borrowing one of our cars to go to an exam at school; and why Australia should have a mining tax. I kept cool, pointed out her illogicalities, and she was happy again. All this before breakfast.

I confidently expect she will now go to work and repeat all my points, as if they were her own. At least she listens.

If they have any self-awareness, they know deep down that they often go nuts, and they appreciate your being the voice of sanity.

@Badger
I think it is wise of you not to take responsibility for or even to get particularly worked up about a woman’s emotional state. You mentioned PMS; I was looking for (but could not find) a recent comment by GKC in which he said rather matter-of-factly that women become mentally unbalanced during their premenstrual time. It made me laugh because it was such a desperately un-PC thing to say but so true. However, it is not just during PMS. I’m not sure if men realize how aggressive women feel during ovulation. Your own woman will be very open and attentive to you during O week, but she will feel irrationally aggressive toward everyone else.

DC wrote, “If they have any self-awareness, they know deep down that they often go nuts, and they appreciate your being the voice of sanity.”

Yes! I couldn’t agree more. My feeling toward my husband, especially during certain points in the month, is basically that I really need him to be the wall that I can fall apart against. What I don’t need is for my emotional outburst to move him or sway him. Then we would both be crazy people.

“”You know this one thing really bugs me about many in the manosphere, the desire and need to give females advice. What team are you playing for anyway?! I mean its not like western society hasn’t coddled women enough already.””

“”It is true that marrying a standard issue beta won’t confer as much status as marrying a greater beta or alpha, but not marrying at all says she couldn’t even get an average beta.””

So true!…….When I was 23(now 47) I had a g/f that tried to convince me that we should “shack-up” and have a baby together.Fortunately for me I was not that effin stupid.She is now 51.She has shacked up with about 5 guys over the years and each time trying to convince them to do the same…..no luck on her part.Saw her about a month ago.She is still single…..on her way to being a spinster.Looks good on her!………and yes,she has 3 cats!….go figure!….L*

“”For the life of me I cannot figure out how women in her situation see themselves as truly desirable. That any man of means who has survived a divorce and managed to rebuild some wealth would EVER consider that woman a good bet. “”

You are a star!……Agreed 100%…..another thing that really bothers me.Have you ever noticed that all the “Femi-Nazi leaders are Jewish?….I am Jewish!…and I do not buy into their BS diatribe!….I have been to the Synagogue and have met many a “single woman”…..and I run the other way as fast as I can!

“”Very few business or economically minded people, with common sense, would place their money in investments that have a 50 % chance of failure. Fewer still would place their whole livelihoods, future children and their freedom at stake, for an investment with a 50 % chance of failure. “”